Japan's Dream of Becoming the World's 4th Moon Landing Nation Shattered

Hakuto-R M1 Lunar Landing Failure by ispace on the Evening of the 25th (Local Time)

Japan has failed in its first-ever attempt to land a private lunar exploration spacecraft. The dream of becoming the world's fourth country to successfully land on the moon is now out of reach.

According to space news outlet Space.com, Japanese private space startup ispace planned to land its self-developed lander Hakuto-R M1 on the moon at around 12:40 PM (Eastern Time, USA) on the 25th, while orbiting 100 km above the lunar surface, but the attempt failed due to loss of communication. Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, said during a webcast broadcast to announce the landing news, "It is presumed that the landing on the lunar surface was unsuccessful," adding, "We plan to continue trying to reconnect and will check what happened."

With the failure of M1's landing, Japan has failed to become the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, following the United States, Russia (former Soviet Union), and China. The United Arab Emirates also failed to become the fifth lunar landing country after losing its self-developed lunar surface rover sent via M1.

ispace formed the 'Hakuto' (meaning White Rabbit) team to participate in the Google Lunar X Prize, a lunar landing exploration project competition held by Google from 2013 to 2018 with a $20 million prize. Although the deadline to claim the prize had passed, ispace continued its lunar landing exploration project. After completing the lander development, it succeeded in sending the probe to the moon using SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch vehicle on December 11 last year. The M1, which entered lunar orbit on March 20 this year, was scheduled to land in the Atlas Crater, an 87 km wide area located in the northwest part of the "Sea of Cold" on the lunar surface. Telemetry data indicated that M1 appeared to be in position, but it did not respond to commands for the landing attempt. ispace's operations team presumed failure after receiving no response long after the scheduled landing time. However, data is still being transmitted from M1, and ispace evaluates that much was gained despite the failure.

Due to M1's failure, the onboard exploration rovers were also lost. M1 carried 'Sora-Q,' a miniature robot developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Rashid, a 10 kg mini rover developed by the United Arab Emirates Space Agency. Rashid, equipped with an AI operating system developed by Canadian companies and a multi-image capturing device, was expected to greatly assist in studying the lunar surface features for two weeks.

UAE Lunar Exploration Rover 'Rashid'

ispace plans to attempt lunar landing explorations again in 2024 and 2025. Previously, in 2019, Israel's SpaceIL launched the Beresheet lander but failed. The CAPSTONE lunar probe launched by the American company Advanced Space arrived at the moon in November last year but was an orbital probe, not a landing mission.

Meanwhile, ispace's current lunar landing attempt had attracted attention as the first private-sector lunar landing if successful. Until now, lunar exploration has mainly been conducted at the national level, but private companies are actively seeking opportunities to commercialize by finding water or other resources on the moon. Accordingly, NASA plans to regularly conduct the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) starting later this year. This program transports scientific experiment tools, observation equipment, rovers, and more to desired locations on the moon on behalf of private companies and foreign clients. More than ten private companies and foreign institutions have already responded and are preparing various lunar exploration programs. South Korea is also developing 'LUSEM (Lunar Space Environment Monitor),' a high-energy particle observation instrument, through the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) to be sent on a lander launched by the American space startup Intuitive Machines via CLPS in 2024.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.