The Japanese mission to the moon was lost

The Japanese company that was trying to become the first private bearing company The lunar probe lost the spacecraft shortly after the expected landing time He admitted that the mission had failed.

We “lost contact” with the investigation program Hakuto-R, Takeshi Hakamada notedthe founder and CEO of Ispace, about 25 minutes after the scheduled landing time.

“We must assume that We were unable to complete the descent on the surface of the moon.”

Ispace They will continue to try to reconnect with the shipwhich was carrying materials from different countries, including the Rover (Space Exploration Vehicle) from the United Arab Emirates, but they believe that it collided with the Earth’s moon.

Hakuto-R probe is 2 x 2.5 meters long and weighs 340 kgIt was launched in December from the US base in Cape Canaveral, Florida (USA), by a SpaceX rocket, and has been in orbit around the Moon for a month.

Everything seems to be evolving planned at the beginning of the processfully automatic, which she was going to take to the lunar soil.

But after several minutes of waiting and failed attempts to reconnect to the deviceThe teams on the ground had to admit that they had lost track of him.

Hakamada himself was responsible for spreading the bad news in a video from his company confirming it Ispace will continue its “efforts for future missions”.

Mission success It wasn’t foolproof. In April 2019, a module of the Israeli company SpaceIL crashed onto the surface of the moon. The same fate befell in the same year an Indian probe called Vikram.

So far, Only the United States, Russia and China managed to put a robot on the moonIt is located 400,000 km from Earth, and in all cases on programs promoted by the government.

probe It carried several roversincluding a Japanese scale model barely three inches tall.

He also wore one from the Emirates, Nicknamed Rashid, weighs 10 kilogramswhich would have been the first in the Arab world to carry out the moon mission.

The small Gulf country sent in 2021 Orbiter to Marsis the last entrant in the space race.

Hakuto’s project (“white rabbit” in Japanese) was one of the five finalists Google Lunar X to put a rover on the moon before 2018, a term that has ended without a winner.

With only 200 employees, Ispace states that it “wants to extend the domain of human life into space And create a sustainable world by providing low-cost, high-frequency shuttle services to the Moon.”

Hakamada ensures that the mission feels “Fundamentals of unlocking the potential of the moon And turn it into a strong and vital economic system.

The company believes that the Earth’s satellite It can accommodate a thousand people in 2040In addition to 10 thousand annual visitors.

Two American companies Stereoscopic and intuitive machinesplans to send lunar landing missions this year.

those errands In cooperation with NASAwhich seeks to develop the lunar economy, physical and scientific experiments commissioned by private companies.

Artemis will take humans to the moon

American program Artemisa plans to send manned flights to the moon in the next few yearsin order to establish a base there and deploy a space station in orbit around the moon.

Japan and the United States announced their intention last year To send a Japanese astronaut to the moon before the end of this contract.