A lunar lander from Japanese company ispace attempted to become the first craft from a private firm to touch down safely on the surface of the moon – but it lost communications just before landing
By Leah Crane
25 April 2023
A picture of Earth during a lunar eclipse, taken from the moon by the Hakuto-R spacecraft
ispace
Another lander has crashed on the moon. The lunar lander Hakuto-R, launched by Japanese firm ispace in December 2022, was supposed to touch down on the moon on 25 April. If it had been successful, it would have been the first privately funded moon landing. But like a previous attempt, it crashed.
“We already confirmed that we have established communication until the very end of the landing – however, now we have lost the communication, so we have to assume that… we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” said ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada minutes after the landing attempt. “Our engineers will continue to investigate the situation.”
In 2019, Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL attempted to send its Beresheet craft to make a similar moon landing, but part of the engine failed and it crashed into the lunar surface. It isn’t yet clear why the Hakuto-R lander didn’t make a safe landing.
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While the trip to the moon can be as short as a few days, Hakuto-R didn’t take a direct path – in order to save fuel, it took a circuitous route, using the gravity of Earth and the sun to give it an extra push over the course of its three-month voyage. It arrived in lunar orbit in March, and since then it has been slowly circling towards the moon and examining the surface to make sure its landing spot was safe.
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Perhaps the most difficult part of the mission came at the end, when the spacecraft needed to slow down from more than 750 kilometres per hour to zero over a period of less than 3 minutes. At a media briefing before the landing, the company’s CTO Ryo Ujiie likened slowing Hakuto-R down for a soft landing to “stepping on the brakes on a running bicycle at the edge of a ski jumping hill”. If Hakuto-R wasn’t able to slow down enough in the end, it may have crash-landed.