On Tuesday, the Tokyo-based business ispace launched a risky effort to land a spacecraft on the surface of the moon, and there are worries that it failed and crashed.
Before it was supposed to touch down, the HAKUTO-R M1 lunar lander gave the
impression that it was traveling toward the Moon as intended, allowing space
to claim the distinction of being the first private spacecraft to land on
the Moon. A webcast of the operation showed a tense control room but stopped
off after approximately five minutes with no new information.
ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada stated that his team was in contact with the
lander right up until the "very end" of the landing attempt when the
broadcast restarted.
But now that we've lost contact, we must presume that our attempt to land
on the moon's surface was unsuccessful. We'll keep you informed whenever we
get more information after our engineers have finished their
investigation.
A similar communications failure pointed to the 2019 disaster of the
Israeli moon lander
Beresheet. In an effort to lay claim to becoming the first private Moon landing, the
nonprofit organization SpaceIL carried out that operation.
As Beresheet descended, its engine failed, and SpaceIL lost contact with
it, indicating that it had collided with the lunar surface.
Only a few months later,
India's initial attempt to land on the moon's surface failed.
Robert Braun, an engineer who has worked on landing and descent teams for
several NASA missions to Mars,
recently told Insider
that among all the things we accomplish in space, landing is one of the more
difficult components because time gets very tight. If anything doesn't go as
planned, there isn't much room for error.
Because of the Moon's peculiar gravity, uneven surface, and bothersome
dust, landers must successfully complete a series of complicated orders with
limited margin for error.
On December 11, the HAKUTO-R lander was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9
rocket, and it reached the Moon's orbit in late March.
The modest Rashid rover constructed by the United Arab Emirates, which was
the country's maiden voyage to the lunar surface, was among the payloads the
lander was carrying for both businesses and governments.
According to
SpaceNews, a "transformable" robot from the Japanese space agency, JAXA, the size of
a baseball, was also on board.
This article was originally published by
Business Insider.
