A Japanese company’s attempt to carry out the first commercial landing on the Moon ended in dramatic silence, with mission controllers unable to establish communication after the scheduled landing.
The HAKUTO-R mission was designed by Japanese company ispace and launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in December 2022. It crashed into the moon during a failed lunar landing in 2019.
“We have to assume that we were unable to complete the landing on the moon,” ispace CEO Tsuyoshi Hakamada said during a live broadcast of the landing attempt. “Our engineers will continue to investigate the situation.”
It is not yet clear what went wrong during the automatic landing process. The lander, also known as Mission 1 or M1, was scheduled to land in Atlas Crater in the Mare Frigolis region in the northern hemisphere on the near side of the Moon about an hour after the initial deorbit maneuver. Hakamada said the team maintained communication with the HAKUTO-R until the final moments of the landing process and successfully obtained flight data useful for future missions.
“I am very proud that we have already achieved so much with this Mission 1,” said Hakamada. “We will continue.”
These future missions are not hypothetical: ispace plans to launch two additional missions carrying payloads from NASA in 2024 and 2025, respectively, and during the M1 landing event, we will continue to monitor the overall mission progress. We provided the latest information.
ispace engineer Scott Moon said during the broadcast: “We are on our way to the launch of M2.”
HAKUTO-R’s primary payload was a rover manufactured by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The rover, called Rashid, was designed to test a number of exploration technologies on the moon, where he operated for two weeks. These devices included high-resolution microscope cameras, thermal imagers, and Langmuir probes, and were used to study how charged particles affect lunar dust. The rover was to become UAE’s second extra-Earth-orbit rover. The UAE also operates the Hope Mars Orbiter.
HAKUTO-R also carried a second lunar rover. This is a transformable robot manufactured by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The robot will roll across the lunar surface, collecting images and data to inform a planned Japanese pressurized rover for future astronauts.
Other payloads onboard the lander included solid-state batteries, a flight computer with artificial intelligence, and a 360-degree camera. The lander was also participating in NASA’s program to claim and transfer ownership of lunar regolith.
Coming into the landing attempt, ispace knew it would face steep odds: the moon demanded a lot of ambitious spacecraft for its time. Still, the failure hits not only Japan, but those who support private lunar exploration.
Planetary scientist Yuichi Tsuda, who led the Hayabusa2 mission, which delivered asteroid samples to Earth in 2020, said, “History is only made by those who challenge it, and it is impossible to challenge it without taking risks. I can’t,” he said. Broadcast before HAKUTO-R landing. “Only dreamers can take risks. Hey ispace team, you are great dreamers.”
