A privately owned Japanese lunar module crashed while attempting to land on Friday, becoming the latest casualty in the commercial race to the moon.
Tokyo-based ispace announced the mission had failed just hours after losing contact with the lander.
The operators tried to establish communication, but in response they heard only silence and the message that the mission was complete.
Communication was lost less than two minutes before the spacecraft and mini-rover were scheduled to land on the moon. Up until that point, the descent from lunar orbit had appeared to be going well.
Takeshi Hakamada, ispace's CEO and founder, has apologized to everyone involved in the mission, which marked the company's second failure on the moon.
Two years ago, the company's first launch to the moon ended in a crash landing, giving its next lander the name Resilience.
On board Resilience was a rover with a shovel for collecting lunar soil, as well as a toy red house designed by a Swedish artist to be placed on the dusty surface of the Moon.
Company officials noted that it was too early to determine whether the same problem was to blame for the failure of both missions.
“This is the second time we have failed to land successfully. So we really need to take this seriously,” Mr. Hakamada told reporters, stressing that the company would continue to conduct more lunar missions.
A preliminary analysis showed the laser altitude measurement system did not work as expected and the lander descended too quickly, officials said.
“Given these circumstances, it is currently believed that the lander likely made a hard landing on the lunar surface,” the company said in a statement.
The Moon has long been the domain of government agencies, but in 2019 it became the target of private companies, and since then it has had more failures than successes.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
