The unmanned moon mission of the Japanese start-up Ispace has apparently failed. The lunar lander “Hakuto-R” likely crashed during a “hard landing” on the lunar surface, Ispace founder Takeshi Hakamada said Wednesday. Radio contact with the probe had previously been lost (see also the video above).
As the company announced Wednesday (local time), almost half an hour after the planned landing, radio contact with its lunar lander was lost. “We must therefore assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” said Ispace founder Takeshi Hakamada.
The goal of the mission was to be the first private company to place a probe on the moon. So far, only the US, Russia and China have managed to put robots on the moon.
Even an Israeli probe crashed
“Hakuto-R” is a probe that is two times 2.50 meters in size. However, the success of the mission was by no means certain from the start. In April 2019, the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL had already failed a similar attempt. Their probe crashed into the surface of Earth’s satellite, some 400,000 kilometers away.
Hakuto-R has several lunar vehicles on board, including a model that is only eight centimeters high. The probe should also put a rover from the United Arab Emirates on the moon. The Atlas crater chosen as the landing site is located on the southeastern edge of the Mare Frigoris (“Sea of Cold”). A rocket from the American space company SpaceX launched the lander in December. Hakuto means “white rabbit” in Japanese – he lived on the moon in Japanese mythology. The “R” stands for reboot.
The first landing followed Soviets
Moon exploration began in the 1950s during the Cold War as a heated competition between the US and the former Soviet Union. The Soviets landed an unmanned probe on the lunar surface in 1959. Ten years later, the US succeeded in the first manned mission with “Apollo 11”. Two years ago, China sent a capsule to the moon and collected rock samples. As part of the “Artemis” project in the US, people will soon fly to the moon again.
Source: Krone
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