Japan's Hakuto-R Lander Fails To Land on the Moon After Control Center, Loses Communication With the Spacecraft

The Japanese startup ispace, which aimed to be the first private company to land on the Moon, has had its hopes dashed as its lander likely crashed on the lunar surface. As per MailOnline, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander was supposed to land in the Atlas Crater at 12:40 pm ET. However, although the landing appeared successful on the simulator, it could not be confirmed due to a loss in communication.

Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ispace, confirmed in the live stream that the company did not complete the landing on the lunar surface. The cause of the failure is not yet known but the company did highlight the "inevitable risk" of using new technology in a lunar environment.

(Photo : Koki Nagahama/Getty Images for Media Ambition Tokyo)
HAKUTO-R Moon Lander & Moon Rover by HAKUTO-R is on display at the Media Ambition Tokyo 2019 on February 21, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan.

Mission Incomplete: Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) Loses Communication With ispace

The landing attempt of ispace on the Moon marks the culmination of over a decade of work by the company. From 2013 to 2018, ispace ran Team Hakuto in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $20 million prize for the first commercial corporation to land a robotic probe on the Moon.

Despite the Prize expiring in 2018 without a winner, Space.com reported that ispace continued developing its lander, which was launched in December 2022 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a test mission called M1.

The lander, Hakuto-R, descended from an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) to the surface in roughly an hour after reaching lunar orbit on March 20. The landing location was the bottom of the Atlas Crater, which is located on the moon's near side in the Mare Frigoris area.

Although Hakuto-R seemed to have positioned itself well, it was unable to stick the landing. Despite this, the lander continued transmitting data during the attempt.

M1 was designed primarily to test ispace's moon-landing hardware and know-how, but Hakuto-R carried several viable payloads on the mission. One of these payloads was an experimental solid-state battery built by the Japanese company Niterra.

In addition, Hakuto-R was set to deploy two robots onto the lunar surface, Sora-Q, a transformable robot developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the company Tomy, and Rashid, a rover operated by the United Arab Emirates' space agency.

ispace's Next Plan of Setting up Human Settlement on the Moon

The Japanese space tech company has revealed that it was already planning its next lunar mission before the failure of its first one, Phys.org reported. The ispace aims to provide affordable transportation to the Moon to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world. The company listed its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market earlier this month.

The ispace employs just 200 people and intends to lay "the groundwork for unleashing the Moon's potential and transforming it into a robust and vibrant economic system."

The company hopes to support a population of 1,000 humans on the moon by 2040, with 10,000 annual visitors. Its next mission, tentatively scheduled for 2020, will include a different lunar landing and the deployment of its rover.