A JAPANESE spacecraft attempting a touchdown on the moon has crashed into the lunar surface, its company said.
The unmanned Resilience moon lander, from private Japanese astro firm ispace, has been declared a failure for a second time.
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Friday’s flop follows a similar result during the company’s first attempt at a moon landing in 2023.
CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said: “This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously.”
Resilience was loaded up a four-wheeled rover and other tech worth a total of $16 million.
It had difficulty measuring the distance between itself and the moon, its makers said, so it bashed into the surface going too fast.
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Mission control lost contact with it less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown and blamed a “hard landing” for knocking out comms.
A bustling room of more than 500 employees and investors gathered in Tokyo to watch the descent fell silent when the data went down.
Chief Tech Officer Ryo Ujiie said: “Truly diverse scenarios were possible, including issues with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors.”
The lander had been aiming for Mare Frigoris – a flat plain on the moon’s surface around 560 from its north pole.
Had it been mission success, the 2.3m-high lander would have unleashed the rover, which would have spent two weeks exploring the lunar surface – including collecting moon dust.
Shareholders clamoured to sell their stakes in the company after watching the blunder unfold.
But CFO Jumpei Nozaki said: “We’re not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event.”
Ispace will now have to wait years before taking another shot at a lunar landing.
However, the country has achieved a successful “soft landing”, when last year the state Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency guided down its SLIM lander.
It became the fifth country ever to do so, joining the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India.
The government last year signed an agreement with Nasa to include Japanese astronauts in its Artemis lunar missions.
And it supporting a number of private companies looking into moon exploration as a business opportunity.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said: “Expectations for ispace have not faded.”
Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings.
It comes amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India.
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