Japan’s ispace says moon lander likely crashed

Japan’s ispace inc said its attempt to make the first private moon landing failed after losing contact with its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander when it accelerated and probably crashed on the lunar surface.

The start-up said it was possible as the lander approached the moon, its altitude measurement system had miscalculated the distance to the surface.

“It apparently went into a free-fall towards the surface as it was running out of fuel to fire up its thrusters,” chief technology officer Ryo Ujiie said yesterday.

It was the second setback for commercial space development in a week after SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded spectacularly minutes after soaring off its launch pad.

A private firm has yet to succeed with a lunar landing.

Only the US, the former Soviet Union and China have soft-landed spacecraft on the moon, with attempts by India and a private Israeli company also ending in failure.

Ispace, which delivers payloads such as rovers to the moon and sells related data, had listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange two weeks ago and a frenzy of excitement had driven up its shares seven-fold.

But disappointment led to a glut of sell orders yesterday and the stock finished down 20%.

Japan’s top government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said while it was sad the mission did not succeed, it wanted ispace to keep trying.

Four months after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX rocket, the M1 lander appeared set to autonomously touch down at about 6.40pm (SA time) on Tuesday, with an animation based on live telemetry data showing it coming as close as 90m from the lunar surface.

By the expected touchdown time, mission control had lost contact with the lander and engineers appeared anxious as they awaited signal confirmation of its fate, which never came.