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Associated Press

A private lunar lander from Japan apparently crashed while attempting a touchdown on Friday, the latest casualty in the commercial rush to the moon.
The Tokyo-based company ispace confirmed the mission as a failure several hours after communication was lost with the lander. Flight controllers scrambled to gain contact, but were met with only silence and said they were concluding the mission.
Communications ceased less than two minutes before the spacecraft’s scheduled landing on the moon with a mini rover. Until then, the descent from lunar orbit seemed to be going well.
CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said he was sorry and apologised to everyone who contributed to the mission, the second lunar strikeout for ispace.
Two years ago, the company’s first moon shot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name Resilience for its successor lander. Resilience carried a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist’s toy-size red house for placement on the moon’s dusty surface.
Company officials said it was too soon to know whether the same problem doomed both missions.
“This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously,” Hakamada told reporters. He stressed that the company would press ahead with more lunar missions.

A preliminary analysis indicates the laser system for measuring the altitude did not work as planned, and the lander descended too fast, officials said. “Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface,” the company said in a written statement.
Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way.
Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March.
Another US company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon’s south pole and was declared dead within hours.
Resilience was targeting the top of the moon, a less forbidding place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side’s northern tier.


Plans had called for the 2.3-metre (7.5-foot) Resilience to beam back pictures within hours and for the lander to lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface this weekend.
Made of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace’s European-built rover – named Tenacious – sported a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for Nasa.
The rover, weighing just 5kg (11 pounds), was going to stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of a couple of centimetres (less than an inch) per second. It was capable of venturing up to 1km (two-thirds of a mile) from the lander and should be operational throughout the two-week mission, the period of daylight.
Besides science and tech experiments, there was an artistic touch.
The rover held a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface.
Minutes before the attempted landing, Hakamada assured everyone that ispace had learned from its first failed mission. “Engineers did everything they possibly could” to ensure success this time, he said.
He considered the latest moon shot “merely a stepping stone”, with its next, much bigger lander launching by 2027 with Nasa involvement, and even more to follow.

Ispace, like other businesses, does not have “infinite funds” and cannot afford repeated failures, Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace’s US subsidiary, said at a conference last month.
While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it was less than the first one which exceeded US$100 million.
Two other US companies are aiming for moon landings by year’s end: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic’s first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth’s atmosphere.
For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the US, China, India and Japan. Of those, only the US has landed people on the moon: 12 Nasa astronauts from 1969 through 1972.
Nasa expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a half-century, with SpaceX’s Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030.


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Japan

Boss of Japan’s ispace apologises after moon landing mission fails again

Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, attends a press conference in Tokyo on Friday. Photo: AFP

JAXA president Hiroshi Yamakawa speaks standing next to a replica of Resilience, a moon lander built by ispace, in Tokyo on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Replicas of lunar rover Tenacious (front) and the Resilience moon lander are displayed at an event in Tokyo on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Musk’s SpaceX set to transform India’s space sector with Jio and Airtel tie-ups

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, in 2020. Space X’s Starlink is partnering Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel in India’s satellite-based digital communications industry. Photo: TNS

Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance has previously clashed with Elon Musk’s Starlink over India’s plan for a satellite broadband spectrum. Photo: Reuters

Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, is aiming to provide satellite-based digital links across India through Starlink. Photo: AP

Singapore’s space technology dreams to take flight with US$45 million development boost

Singapore will inject a further US$45 million over two years to grow its space technology programme. Photo: Shutterstock

Singapore’s Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong. Photo: Handout/EPA-EFE

ST Engineering Geo-Insights General Manager Goh Ing Nam (second from left) and Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at LeoLabs Edward Lu (second from right) at the MOU signing in Singapore on Wednesday. Photo: ST Engineering Geo-Insights 

Private US, Japanese lunar landers head to moon on a single rocket

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on Wednesday. Photo: AP

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches carrying two lunar landers. Photo: Reuters

The Resilience lunar lander. Photo: ispace via AFP

 Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander. Photo: SpaceX via AP

ispace’s micro rover. Photo: ispace via AP

Intuitive Machines’ moon lander apparently touches down on its side – again

Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander enters orbit around the moon on Monday. Photo: TNS

Moon landing successful for private US spaceship Blue Ghost

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander. Photo: Reuters

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander as the primary payload and Japan-based ispace’s Resilience lander as a secondary payload, from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 15. Photo: Reuters

This image shows Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander on its third lunar orbit, showing the far side of the Moon and a top-down view of Blue Ghost. Photo: AFP

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The company lost contact with the Resilience spacecraft, which was carrying a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt


The company lost contact with the Resilience spacecraft, which was carrying a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt.


Space

Jeff Bezos

NASA