What would have been the primary private Moon landing has resulted in failure after Japanese startup ispace lost contact with its lunar lander, as reported earlier by . Because the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander inched closer to the Moon’s surface, engineers found that they were now not in a position to communicate with the spacecraft.
“Currently, we have now not confirmed communications from the lander,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a livestream of the mission. “So we have now to assume that we couldn’t complete the landing.”
Last December, ispace launched its Hakuto-R lander from Cape Canaveral, Florida atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The lander launched into a three-month-long journey to succeed in lunar orbit before it was purported to touch down on the surface of the Moon on Tuesday. Things appeared to be going as planned until engineers received no response from the spacecraft after its expected 12:40PM ET touchdown.
“Our engineers and mission operations specialists in our MCC [mission control center] are currently working to substantiate the present status of the lander,” ispace stated following the livestream. “Further information on the status of the lander shall be announced because it becomes available.”