'High probability' lander crashed on moon, says Japanese company

Employees of “ispace” react after the company announced they lost signal from the lander in HAKUTO-R lunar exploration program on the Moon at a venue to watch its landing in Tokyo, Japan, April 26, 2023.Official word finally came in a statement: “It has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the moon’s surface.”

“If space is hard, landing is harder,” tweeted Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I know from personal experience how awful this feels.”Article contentLeshin worked on NASA’s Mars Polar lander that crashed on the red planet in 1999. It took a roundabout route to the moon following its December liftoff, beaming back photos of Earth along the way. The lander entered lunar orbit on March 21.

Founded in 2010, ispace hopes to start turning a profit as a one-way taxi service to the moon for other businesses and organizations. The company has already raised $300 million to cover the first three missions, according to Hakamada.For this test flight, the two main experiments were government-sponsored: the UAE’s 22-pound rover Rashid, named after Dubai’s royal family, and the Japanese Space Agency’s orange-sized sphere designed to transform into a wheeled robot on the moon.

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