A Japanese company loses contact with the device it wanted to land on the Moon

The Hakuto-R program aimed for the Moon, but did it succeed? The Japanese start-up ispace announced that it had lost contact with the craft it was trying to land on Tuesday, April 25, as it tried to become the first private company to succeed in this perilous maneuver. “We lost communication so we must consider that we could not complete the landing on the surface of the Moon”recognized the leader of ispace, Takeshi Hakamada.

“Our engineers will continue to analyze the situation”he added, promising to give more information as soon as possible and that his company would continue its “efforts for future missions”.

Only three countries have successfully landed on the moon

The Hakuto-R program lander had been in orbit some 100 kilometers above the Moon for a month. Communication with it was lost about an hour after it began its descent to the lunar surface. It carried several small vehicles, including a miniature model developed by the Japanese Space Agency in collaboration with toymaker Takara Tomy and a rover built by the United Arab Emirates. It would have been the first machine from the Arab world to land on the moon and would have been piloted by French scientists.

So far, only the United States, Russia and China have successfully landed robots on the Moon. An Indian probe crashed in 2019, as did that of the Israeli organization SpaceIL the same year. Two other companies, the American companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, should take off later in 2023 other machines intended for the lunar surface.