Tokyo: The Japanese company Ispace said that its moon Lander did not crash on the lunar surface during his Touchdown attempt on Friday, marking another failure two years after an inaugural mission without success.
Ispace, based in Tokyo, hoped to join the companies of us, the intuitive machines and the Firefly aerospace to make successful commercial moon landings in the middle of a global race that includes state lunar missions of China and India.
Although the failure means another pause of several years in Japan’s commercial access to the moon, the country is still committed to the Artemis program led by the United States and a wide range of Japanese companies study lunar exploration as a commercial border.
The resilience, the second lunar landing of Ispace, had trouble measuring its distance to the surface and could not stop its decrease quick enough, said the company, added that it has not been able to communicate with the resistance after a probable landing.
“The truly diverse scenarios were possible, including problems with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors,” said Ispace technology director Ryo Ujiie, to a press conference.
A room of more than 500 ISPACE employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly were silent when the flight data was lost less than two minutes before the TouchDown time scheduled during a public visualization event in the Mitsui Banking Corp Summitic Mission Party in Wee Hours in Tokyo.
Ispace’s actions were not at their age. At the close of Thursday, Ispace had a market capitalization of more than 110 billion yen ($ 766 million).
Posted in Dawn, June 7, 2025
