A privately owned Japanese lunar module crashed while attempting to land on Friday, marking the latest setback in the commercial race to the Moon.
Tokyo-based ispace announced the mission had failed hours after contact with the lander was lost.
The operators tried to establish contact, but instead of an answer they heard only silence and declared the mission complete.
Communications were cut off less than two minutes before the spacecraft was supposed to land on the moon with the mini-robot. Up until that point, the descent from lunar orbit had seemed to proceed without problems.
Takeshi Hakamada, ispace's CEO and founder, apologized to everyone involved in the mission, which was the company's second failure on the moon.
Two years ago, the company's first flight to the Moon ended in an emergency landing, which later led to the name of their next lander, Resilience.
On board Resilience was a rover with a shovel for collecting lunar soil, as well as a toy red house made by a Swedish artist to place on the lunar surface.
Company officials said it was too early to determine whether the same problem was linked to the failure of both missions.
“This is the second time we have failed to land. So we really need to take this seriously,” Mr. Hakamada said at a press conference. He stressed that the company would continue to carry out more lunar missions.
A preliminary analysis showed that the laser altitude measurement system did not work properly 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 governments, but since 2019 it has become the target of private companies, and in that time there have been more failures than victories.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
