First Private Moon Landing Ends in Failure as Japanese Company Loses Contact

The HAKUTO-R M1 lunar lander appeared to be descending toas planned, posing ispace to claim the historic feat of the first private Moon landing – until it was supposed to touch down. The control room appeared tense in a livestream of the operation, which cut away after about five minutes with no update.

When the livestream resumed, ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said that his team had communication with the lander up until the"very end" of the landing attempt. "However, now we lost the communication, so we have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface," he said."Our engineers will continue to investigate the situation, and then we will update you [with] further information.", in 2019. That operation was conducted by nonprofit SpaceIL, in its own attempt to claim the first private Moon landing.

Beresheet's engine went out as it descended, then SpaceIL lost communication with the spacecraft, indicating it had crashed into the lunar surface. An enhanced picture shows the crash site of Beresheet, a lunar lander created by the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL. (

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