A Japanese company has lost contact with a small robotic spacecraft it sent to the moon. Analysis of data from the vehicle suggests that it ran out of propellant during its final approach and instead of landing it gently crashed into the lunar surface.
After firing its main engine, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander built by Japan’s Ispace fell from lunar orbit. About an hour later, at 12:40 pm Eastern time on Tuesday, the lander, about 7.5 feet tall, is expected to land in Atlas Crater, a 54-mile-wide feature in the northeast quadrant near part of the month.
But after the time of touchdown, no signal was received from the spacecraft. In a live video streamed by the company, a hush fell over the Tokyo control room as Ispace engineers, mostly young and from around the world, looked on with worried expressions at their screens.
In a statement released Wednesday morning in Japan, the company reported that Ispace engineers observed that the estimated remaining propellant “was at a low threshold and shortly thereafter the descent speed increased rapidly.”
In other words, the spacecraft ran out of fuel and fell.
The spacecraft lost communication. “Based on this, it is known that there is a high probability that the lander will eventually make a hard landing on the surface of the Moon,” the company said.
An investigation is now required to determine why the spacecraft apparently misjudged its altitude. The analysis suggests that it is still high when it should be on the ground.
In an interview, Takeshi Hakamada, Ispace’s chief executive, said he was “very proud” of the result though. “I was not disappointed,” he said.
With the data obtained from the spacecraft, the company will be able to use “lessons learned” in the next two missions, Mr. Hakamada said.
The Hakuto-R spacecraft was launched in December and took a circuitous but energy-efficient path to the moon, entering lunar orbit in March. Last month, engineers checked the lander’s systems before resuming the landing test.
The Ispace lander will be the first step towards a new paradigm of space exploration, with governments, research institutions and companies sending scientific experiments and other cargo to the moon.
The start of the transition to lunar transportation will have to wait for other companies later this year. Two commercial landers, built by American companies and funded by NASA, are scheduled to be launched on the moon in the coming months.
NASA established the Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program, or CLPS, in 2018, because buying private spacecraft aboard for instruments and equipment on the moon promises to be cheaper than building its own vehicles. In addition, NASA hopes to spur a new commercial industry around the moon, and competition between lunar companies is likely to further drive down costs. The program is modeled in part on a similar effort that successfully provided transportation to and from the International Space Station.
So far, however, NASA has little to show for its efforts. The first two missions later this year, by Astrobotic Technology in Pittsburgh and Intuitive Machines in Houston, are years behind schedule, and are some of the companies NASA has chosen to bid for CLPS missions. gone out of business.
Ispace plans a second mission with a lander of nearly identical design next year. In 2026, a larger Ispace lander will carry NASA payloads to the far side of the moon as part of a CLPS mission led by Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass.
Two countries – Japan and the United Arab Emirates – lost cargo aboard the lander. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, wants to test a two-wheeled convertible lunar robot, and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai is sending a small rover to explore the landing site. Each would be their respective country’s first robotic explorer on the lunar surface.
Other payloads include a test module for a solid-state battery from NGK Spark Plug Company, an artificial intelligence flight computer and 360-degree cameras from Canadensys Aerospace.
During their space race more than 50 years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union both successfully sent robotic spacecraft to the surface of the moon. Recently, China has landed empty spacecraft three times on the moon.
However, other attempts failed.
Beresheet, an effort of SpaceIL, an Israeli nonprofit, crashed in April 2019 when a command sent to the spacecraft accidentally turned off the main engine, causing the spacecraft to fall into its wreckage.
Eight months ago, India’s Vikram lander veered off course about a mile above the surface during its landing attempt, then went silent.
If the Ispace lander crashes, it may take a long time to understand from the telemetry sent from the spacecraft to know what happened. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has finally found the crash sites of Beresheet and Vikram, and may find M1’s resting place in Atlas Crater, too.
Ispace is not the only private space company to encounter difficulties in the first few months of 2023. New rocket models built by SpaceX, ABL Space Systems, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Relativity failed during their first flights , although some have reached space earlier than others. . Virgin Orbit’s latest rocket launch failed and the company later declared bankruptcy, although it continues to work towards another launch.
At the same time, the launch frequency is higher than ever, with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket having many successful takeoffs so far in 2023. An Arianespace rocket also sent a probe to the European Space Agency in a mission to Jupiter.
