ispace loses contact with lunar lander seconds before landing

Japanese company ispace lost communication with its Hakuto-R lander just moments before it was supposed to touch down on the lunar surface.

“At this moment, we have not been able to confirm successful landing on the lunar surface,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said on the company’s livestream. “Currently, we have not confirmed the communication from the lander. […] We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface. ”

He said that ispace engineers will continue to assess the situation and provide an update once that investigation is complete.

The lander had a nominal five-month journey to the moon, after launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last December. The landing sequence appeared to be going well, with the lander moving at around 50 kilometers per hour, until the final landing sequence commenced.

The news is no doubt a major disappointment for Tokyo-based ispace, which has been working on lunar landing technology since 2010. The company, which originated as a team competing for Google’s Lunar X Prize, was hoping to be the first fully private firm to send a commercial lander to the moon. Thus far, only three nations – the United States, the USSR, and China – have landed a spacecraft on the lunar surface.

“We will keep going,” Hakamada said at the end of the livestream. “Never quit [our] lunar quest.”

Developing…