The moon will be a stepping stone for humans to travel to Mars and explore the galaxy like a work of science fiction. This has prompted the United States, China, India and Russia to return astronauts to its surface this decade.
Japan has similar aspirations through cooperation with NASA but the private company ispace Inc wants to be the first company to land a probe on the moon's surface. Their second attempt, which was made early this morning, however, ended in failure.
The Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon mission was carried out using the RESILIENCE lander. It began moving to land from an altitude of 100 km to 20 km around 3 am this morning. Everything was going well before communication with the control center was suddenly lost. At 8 am Japan time, the control center decided that communication with RESILIENCE could not be restored and therefore the mission was considered a failure.
The control center confirmed that the laser system that measures the distance to the moon's surface had a latency period. This is believed to have caused the distance to the lunar surface to be inaccurate, causing RESILIENCE to crash.
iSpace's first attempt to land in April 2023 ended in failure with telemetry showing the lander accelerating before crashing. The failure of this mission opened the door for Intuitive Machines to become the first private company to successfully land on the moon in February 2024 using the Nova-C Odysseus lander.