A private Japanese spacecraft crashed into the Moon while attempting the country’s first commercial lunar landing on Thursday, June 5, the company has confirmed.
This is the second failed moon mission for Tokyo-based ispace, which launched the Resilience lander aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in January.
But once it reached an altitude of roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) above the lunar surface, mission control lost telemetry with the lander.
But so far, only Firefly Aerospace has achieved a fully successful private lunar landing.
The company launched its Blue Ghost lander on the same Falcon 9 rocket that ferried Resilience to the Moon in January.
On Thursday, June 5, a private Japanese spacecraft attempted the nation’s first commercial lunar landing and crashed into the moon, the company confirmed. Tokyo-based ispace launched the Resilience lander on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in January, marking their second unsuccessful moon mission.
According to the Associated Press, ispace lost contact with Resilience less than two minutes prior to its planned lunar landing. The company clarified in a statement issued this morning that the spacecraft’s initial descent proceeded without incident. However, the lander lost communication with mission control once it was about 12 miles (20 kilometers) above the lunar surface. Ispace determined that Resilience had most likely crashed on the lunar surface, ending the mission, after attempting and failing to establish contact again.
Takeshi Hakamada, the founder and CEO of ispace, said in the statement, “Our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause, given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing.”.
According to the data that is currently available, it seems that the laser device that measures the distance between Resilience and the lunar surface malfunctioned, causing the accident, according to ispace. Consequently, the lander was unable to slow down enough to execute its intended soft landing.
NASA reports that Resilience entered lunar orbit on May 6 after beginning its journey on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on January 15. A tiny rover named Tenacious, a water electrolyzer experiment, an algae-based food production module, and a deep space radiation monitor were among the five payloads carried by the 2,200-pound (1,000-kilogram), prism-shaped lander.
Perhaps the most intriguing—or at least the most unusual—was the cute little house that Resilience was trying to build on the moon. Swedish artist Mikael Genberg created the toy-sized red cottage with white trim, which he aptly called “the Moonhouse.”. According to Genberg’s website, he has had a dream for 25 years of placing a small house on the moon. Unfortunately, though, this fanciful piece of art was unable to achieve its goal.
The demise of Resilience brings to mind ispace’s initial attempt in April 2023 to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Additionally, the lander ran out of propellant as it approached the surface, resulting in a crash landing at the end of that mission.
One of the companies working to offer commercial payload transportation services to the Moon is iSpace. Firefly Aerospace, however, is the only company to have successfully made a private lunar landing to date. Using the same Falcon 9 rocket that carried Resilience to the Moon in January, the company launched its Blue Ghost lander.
ispace plans to launch two more Moon missions in 2027 despite two sets of failures. Although the company plans to use the larger, upgraded Apex 1.0 lander for these missions, it is unclear if it will outperform Resilience.
