The moon is suddenly hot again, with numerous countries and private companies clamoring to get on the lunar bandwagon. The UAE - already in orbit around Earth with an astronaut aboard the International Space Station and in orbit around Mars - was seeking to extend its presence to the moon. "We will keep going, never quit lunar quest," he said.įor this test flight, the two main experiments were government-sponsored: the UAE's 22-pound (10-kilogram) rover Rashid, named after Dubai's royal family, and the Japanese Space Agency's orange-sized sphere designed to transform into a wheeled robot on the moon. The company has already raised US$300 million to cover the first three missions, according to Hakamada. It's possible the lander miscalculated its altitude and ran out of fuel before reaching the surface, company officials said at a news conference later in the day.įounded in 2010, ispace hopes to start turning a profit as a one-way taxi service to the moon for other businesses and organizations. Engineers monitoring the fuel gauge noticed that as the tank approached empty, the lander picked up speed as it descended and communication was then lost, according to ispace. The lander entered lunar orbit on March 21.įlight controllers ascertained that the lander was upright as it used its thrusters to slow during Wednesday's final approach. It took a roundabout route to the moon following its December liftoff, beaming back photos of Earth along the way. Named Hakuto, Japanese for white rabbit, the spacecraft had targeted the Atlas crater in the northeastern section of the moon's near side, more than 50 miles (87 kilometres) across and just over 1 mile (2 kilometres) deep. That was also the expected length of the full mission. The 7-foot (2.3-metre) Japanese lander carried a mini lunar rover for the United Arab Emirates and a toylike robot from Japan designed to roll around in the moon dust for about 10 days. Leshin worked on NASA's Mars Polar lander that crashed on the red planet in 1999. "I know from personal experience how awful this feels." "If space is hard, landing is harder," tweeted Laurie Leshin, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An Israeli nonprofit tried to land on the moon in 2019, but its spacecraft was destroyed on impact. Only three governments have successfully touched down on the moon: Russia, the United States and China. Hakamada vowed to try again, saying a second moonshot is already in the works for next year. If all had gone well, ispace would have been the first private business to pull off a lunar landing. Official word finally came in a statement: "It has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the moon's surface." Flight controllers peered at their screens in Tokyo as minutes went by with only silence from the moon.Ī grim-faced team surrounded Hakamada as he announced that the landing likely failed. Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, held out hope even after contact was lost as the lander descended the final 33 feet (10 metres). It was a disappointing setback for ispace, which after a 4 1/2-month mission had been on the verge of doing what only three countries have done: successfully land a spacecraft on the moon.
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