2023-04-26 11:36:44
The first private landing on the Moon has ended in failure. Japanese company ispace inc has acknowledged that its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) module accelerated unexpectedly and likely crashed on the lunar surface on Tuesday shortly after losing contact with Earth.
The company believes that as the spacecraft was approaching the Moon, its altitude measurement system miscalculated the distance to the surface. “It apparently went into free fall towards the surface because it was running out of fuel to power its thrusters,” CTO Ryo Ujiie said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Four months after its launch on a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at around 6:40 p.m., the 2.3-meter-tall M1 lander was 90 km from its target and appeared to be ready to reach it. The probe was to gradually narrow its orbit around the Moon from 100 km above the surface to about 25 km, traveling at nearly 6,000 km/hour.
It was quite a feat, since, according to Ujiie, slowing down to avoid the Moon’s gravitational pull was like slamming on the brakes on a bicycle right on the edge of a ski jump.
By the expected time of landing, mission control had lost contact with the module, and engineers seemed eager for the live feed as they waited for confirmation of their destination signal, which never came. At least the lander has completed eight of the 10 mission objectives in space that will provide valuable data for the next landing attempt in 2024, according to company CEO Takeshi Hakamada.
like a baseball
If it had managed to land on the edge of Mare Frigoris in the Moon’s northern hemisphere, as planned, the spacecraft would have deployed a baseball-sized, two-wheeled rover developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tomy Co. Ltd and Sony Group Corp. It also planned to deploy a four-wheeled rover named Rashid to the United Arab Emirates. In addition, it was carrying an experimental solid-state battery made by Niterra Co Ltd, among other devices to measure its performance on the Moon.
The mission was insured by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co, a unit of MS&AD Insurance Group, and ispace said it could receive some compensation.
This was the second setback for commercial space development in a week after SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded spectacularly minutes after lifting off from its launch pad.
Only the United States, Russia and China have soft-landed spacecraft on the Moon, and attempts by India and a private Israeli company in recent years have also ended in failure.
destroy a rocket
The ispace firm had just listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange just two weeks ago, and a frenzy of excitement about its prospects had seen its shares rise sevenfold since then. But the disappointment has led to excess sell orders on Wednesday. After not trading all day, the stock ended 20% lower at a forced closing price decided by the exchange that reflects the balance of buy and sell orders.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, said that while he was sad that the mission was unsuccessful, the country wants ispace to “keep trying” as its efforts were important to the development of a national space industry.
Japan, which has set a goal of sending Japanese astronauts to the Moon by the end of this decade, has had some recent setbacks. Last month, the national space agency had to destroy its new H3 medium-lift rocket upon reaching space after its second-stage engine failed to fire. Its solid-fuel Epsilon rocket also failed after launch in October.
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