Ispace Moon lander 'Resilience' crashes

The Japanese-made private lunar lander, named 'Resilience', crashed while attempting to touch down on the Moon, with its makers Ispace officially calling the mission a failure

[Image posted by ispace on X.]

Tokyo: The Japanese-made private lunar lander, named 'Resilience', crashed while attempting to touch down on the Moon, with its makers Ispace officially calling the mission a failure.

Tokyo-based ispace said on Friday that its Moon lander Resilience dropped out of the lunar orbit as planned and that the mission appeared to be going well.

However, the flight controllers lost contact with Resilience moments before its scheduled touchdown on the surface of the moon following an hourlong descent.

Resilience was carrying a mini rover.

Landing on Moon

The iSpace further said that there was a problem with the laser rangefinder taking too long leaving the spacecraft too little time to decelerate.

Landing on the Moon is highly challenging as spacecraft must rely on precisely controlled thruster burning to slow their descent over treacherous terrain.

Only five countries - the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and most recently Japan, have so far achieved soft lunar landings.

Among the private players, Houston-based Intuitive Machines was the first private enterprise to reach the Moon. iSpace Moon landing attempt was second and Japan's first by a private company.

iSpace engineers tried to reboot the lander after it lost the communication but failed.

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