Japanese lander appears to fail just before touchdown on the Moon [Updated]

Update, April 25 at 1:15 pm ET: The Japanese company ispace maintained communication with its Hakuto-R spacecraft until the final moments before was supposed to land on the Moon, the company's founder, Takeshi Hakamada, said Tuesday. His comments came about 25 minutes after the company's lander was due to make a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. Then, they lost contact. As a result, it is highly likely the lander crashed into the Moon.

"We have to assume that we did not complete the landing on the lunar surface," Hakamada said on the company's webcast, his voice filled with emotion. "We will keep going, never quit in our quest."

The company's engineers will continue assessing data from the spacecraft during its descent on Tuesday. They will use that knowledge, Hakamada said, to improve future versions of the company's lander. With this apparent failure, ispace's lander becomes the second privately funded effort attempting to make a soft landing on the Moon that has failed. The Israeli Beresheet spacecraft crashed into the Moon in 2019 after a main engine failure.

Original post: It's nearly time for a privately developed Japanese lunar lander to make a historic attempt to touch down on the Moon.

After spending five months in transit to reach the Moon—following a looping but fuel-efficient trajectory—the Hakuto-R mission will attempt to land on the Moon as early as Tuesday. If its mission operators decide to proceed, the landing attempt will begin as soon as 11:40 am ET on Tuesday (15:40 UTC). It will be livestreamed.

The landing attempt will start from an altitude of about 100 km above the lunar surface, where the spacecraft is presently in a circular orbit. It will begin with a braking maneuver by a firing of the spacecraft's main engine, to be followed by a pre-programmed set of commands during which the lander will adjust its attitude with respect to the Moon's surface and decelerate to make a soft landing. The process should take about an hour.

Based in Tokyo, ispace was founded in 2010 as part of the Google Lunar XPrize competition and has since emerged as one of a new generation of companies focused on commercial lunar services. The company aims to design and build lunar landers and rovers and ultimately provide high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon. The company has long-term plans to develop lunar resources and sell them to others.

The first flight of the Hakuto-R program launched in December as a dedicated mission on a Falcon 9 rocket. The lunar lander is carrying several payloads down to the lunar surface, including the United Arab Emirates' Rashid rover, along with Tomy and JAXA's SORA-Q transformable lunar robot.

Only a handful of nations have landed on the Moon, and no private company has successfully made a soft touchdown. The first privately funded lunar lander mission, the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft, crashed into the Moon in 2019 after a main engine failure during the landing sequence. If ispace is successful on Tuesday, the company will make history.

This lunar landing is at the vanguard of a number of private landing attempts sponsored, in part, by NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, which purchases transport to the Moon from private companies. Two US-based companies, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, could both launch their lunar landers to the Moon sometime this summer. Astrobotic says its lander is ready to fly, but the company is waiting on United Launch Alliance to complete the development of the Vulcan rocket. Intuitive Machines will fly on the Falcon 9 rocket, but the company has not yet completed its lander.

By partnering with a US-based team led by Draper Laboratory, ispace is also competing for contracts in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. The Draper team recently won its first contract from NASA to land a scientific payload near the south lunar pole on the far side of the Moon in 2025.