June 5 (UPI) -- After losing contact with it for several hours, a privately owned Japanese company said its lunar lander had crashed into the surface of moon in what the company, ispace, confirmed was a failed lunar landing mission.
Privately owned ispace was attempting a remotely controlled landing of its module, Resilience, on the moon Thursday afternoon, but confirmed Thursday night that, based on the trajectory and speed of the lander just prior to touchdown, it had likely crashed.
"As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing," a statement from the company explained. "Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface."
The company based its conclusion on data collected from a laser rangefinder, information that took longer than expected to return to mission controllers, which indicated that the Resilience was not operating properly.
ispace attempted the moon landing at 3:17 EDT but lost contact shortly before touchdown.
The mission proceeded as expected until losing contact with the lander immediately prior to touching down on the moon, ispace U.S. subsidiary chairman and former NASA astronaut Ron Garan told CNN.
"I'm not seeing the telemetry," Garan said, "but I'm getting updates on my phone [and] everything was normal."
It is very difficult for private-sector aerospace companies to develop the technology needed to successfully put a lander on the moon, he added.
"The reason we are doing this is to learn," Garan said.
The Resilience was scheduled to land on the moon's Mare Figoris region, which is located on the near side of the moon's northern hemisphere.
The about 7.5-foot-tall lander contains a four-wheeled rover named Tenacious for exploring the lunar surface in the moon's unexplored northern region.
The rover contains a high-definition camera, a shovel for collecting lunar samples for NASA and weighs about 11 pounds.
It also contains a tiny red cottage that its builder, Mikael Genberg, named the Moonhouse, which the rover planned place on the lunar surface.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 15 launched the ispace lander to the moon along with a private Blue Ghost moon lander built by Firefly Aerospace, Space.com reported.
The Blue Ghost touched down on the Mare Crisium region of the moon on March 2.
The Resilience mission took much longer to reach the moon due to a low-energy transfer path that ispace chose for its lander, which arrived in orbit around the moon on May 6.
The livestream is presented in English, but another livestream is available in Japanese.
A similar ispace mission in April 2023 failed when its uncrewed lander crashed while trying to land in the moon's Atlas Crater. It was ispace's first attempt to put a lander on the moon.
The mission is part of ispace's plan to colonize the moon by having people living on it by 2040, ABC News reported.
The privately owned aerospace firm intends to build a city housing 1,000 people and would host thousands more who could visit as tourists.
Officials at ispace also plan to land a much larger lander on the moon with assistance from NASA. That mission is scheduled to launch by 2027.
This story continues to develop. Check back for updates.
