The Japanese private spacecraft Hakuto-R, owned by Ispace, reached the surface of the moon, but Atlas lost contact with the control center after it tried to land in the lunar crater region. The module’s landing was posted on YouTube.
A few hours later, Ispace reported that it still could not confirm the success or failure of the mission, and subsequently admitted that the device was lost.
The lunar module landing was scheduled for April 26 at 1:40 am Japanese time (April 25 at 19:40 Moscow time). When communication with the module was not restored 20 minutes after the scheduled landing time, mission leaders considered it a failure and promised to find out why.
The company’s CEO, Takeshi Hakamada, said the company lost contact with the vehicle during the landing.
“We had a connection until the moment of landing, but then we lost the connection. We have to admit that we could not make a successful landing on the lunar surface,” he is quoted as saying. Bloomberg.
According to him, communication with the module was cut off just before it touched the surface of the moon, so experts do not rule out that the device was dropped or seriously damaged.
landing acceleration
Ispace said that an hour before the planned landing, the Hakuto-R in lunar orbit had taken all necessary action: it started the engine to brake and slowed down.
However, the newspaper writes that the control center lost contact with the device when it was 10 meters above the lunar surface and moving at 25 km / h. Khalej Times. In the last seconds before landing, it accelerated sharply, while communication with the module continued.
“Considering all the circumstances, we believe it is highly likely that the module eventually made a hard landing on the moon,” Ispace said, adding that communication with Hakuto-R most likely will not be restored.
The company now plans to collect all possible flight data to “significantly improve technology readiness” for a second mission scheduled for 2024 and a third mission scheduled for 2025. According to the head of Ispace, despite the failure of the mission, the experts managed to collect “a large amount of information” and gain significant experience.
In response, Hiroshi Yamakawa, head of the Japan Aerospace Agency, pledged to continue supporting the project and collaborating with Ispace and other private space companies.
Mission objectives
The Hakuto-R was supposed to be the first commercial module to land on the moon. Before that, only states – the USA, the USSR and China – sent spacecraft to the Earth satellite.
The device went into space with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket on December 11, 2022. The rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, the module’s path to the moon took three months. The spacecraft spent several weeks in lunar orbit.
Ispace chose Atlas Crater as its primary landing site because “it meets the specifications to demonstrate the module’s technology, the research objectives of the MBR Space Center mission, and the mission requirements of other customers,” he said.
The mission’s main task was to search for water at the landing site and test technologies for future flights to the Moon. He went to the moon aboard Hakuto-R, equipped with scientific instruments, two lunar rovers and other payloads, Bloomberg reports.
On board were the Japanese mini rover Sora-Q and the four-wheeled lunar rover Rashid, created by the United Arab Emirates. Rashid is half a meter long and weighs only 10 kg – less than 10% of the mass of the Chinese Yutu-2 lunar rover currently exploring the far side of the moon.
The lunar rover was supposed to work for one lunar day (14 Earth days) and had to be controlled by artificial intelligence algorithms that could independently find the interesting features of the relief. Additionally, the probes on the lunar rover were supposed to measure the temperature and density of the charged particles that cause dust to move across the lunar surface.