A Japanese spacecraft has landed on the moon again
The investigations of the Japanese company ISPACE identified problems with speed and an altitude sensor that probably condemned the landing
A Spacex Falcon 9 rocket transported lunar landing m2 to space.
Gregg Newton/AFP through Getty Images
A Japanese spacecraft has probably crashed on the moon, the second failed landing attempt of the private firm based in Tokyo Ispace.
Mission 2 (M2) Hakuto-R Lander-also called Resilience-Began its landing sequence of an altitude orbitue of 100 kilometers at 3.13 am local time on June 5. The ship was close to the center of Mare Frigoris (cold sea) at 4.17 am
ISPACE’s team said in a press concept that he lost contact with M2 when the ship was 192 meters above the moon surface and descended faster than expected. An attempt to restart M2 either succeeded.
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M2 did not receive measures of the distance from each other and the lunar surface in time to reduce the speed and reach its correct landing rate, the team said.
“Potthastly slowed down, but not soft enough,” says Clive Neal, who studies the moon at the University of Notre Dame in Indianapolis, USA. “It is something that I think will definitely be repairable, because approaching it means that there are some adjustments that will be necessary for the next one,” he adds.
If M2 had succeeded on the lunar surface, the mission would have the second time that a commercial company had achieved the feat and the first for a non -American company. Ispace mission 1 (M1) probably crashed cheating an landing attempt in April 2023.
Second chance
Lunar landings are challenging. When M1 crashed, Ryo Ujiie, ISPACE’s director of Technology said that telemetry, that collects data on the altitude and speed of crafts, estimated that M1 was on the surface when it was, which makes the Lander fall free.
Talking with Nature Last week, UJIIE said the company had approached the problem of telemetry with M2 and modified its software. “We also carefully select how to approach the landing site,” he added.
If M2 landed successfully, the crafts have supplied electricity for its load, including water electrolyization equipment and a module for food production experiments developed by the Takasago engineering and biotechnology firm based in Japan Euglena. A deep space radiation investigation by the National Central University of Taiwan, and the 54 -centimeter tenacious rover was also on board. The Rover, created by the European Subsidiary of Ispace in Luxembourg, would be released from Mander to collect images, location data and lunar sand known as Regolith. Tenacious also has a small red house made by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
Pair of commercial couples
The ship was launched on January 15 from Cabo Cañaveral, Florida, aboard a Spacex Falcon 9. The rocket also carried the land of the Blue Ghost Luna, developed by Firefly Aospace, an aerospace company based in Texas, which landed on the moon on March 2.
M2 tok a longer gong path than Blue Ghost, making a lunar overflow on February 15 and spending two months in a low -energy transfer orbit before entering the lunar orbit on May 7. Ujiie says that the road was slower because it was a low energy trajectory, which means that less fuel was used to move between the earth and the lunar orbit.
Richard De Gray, an astronomer from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says there will probably be more private companies that try to get their own crafts on the Moon. “It seems that the great government players such as NASA are eager to partner with commercial companies,” he says, it can develop and launch cheaper crafts than government agencies. He also expects more groups to be launched in groups, such as the launch of M2 and Blue Ghost.
This article reproduces with permission and laundry. First published June 6, 2025.
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