By Kantaro Komiya
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the lunar surface during its touchdown attempt on Friday, marking another failure two years after an unsuccessful inaugural mission.
Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India.
Although the failure means another multi-year pause in Japan’s commercial access to the moon, the country remains committed to the U.S.-led Artemis program and a wide range of Japanese companies are studying lunar exploration as a business frontier.
Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface and could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said, adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing.
“Truly diverse scenarios were possible, including issues with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors,” ispace Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie told a press conference.
A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent when flight data was lost less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown time during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo.
Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29% fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen ($766 million).
“We’re not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event,” CFO Jumpei Nozaki said in the press conference, citing recurring investor support.
In 2023, ispace’s first lander crashed into the moon’s surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design was mostly unchanged in Resilience.
$16 MILLION PAYLOAD
Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace’s Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of $16 million, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university.
The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900 km (560 miles) from the moon’s north pole.
If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high lander and the rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing of regolith, the moon’s fine-grained surface material, on a contract with U.S. space agency NASA.
Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March.
Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world’s first commercial lunar touchdown, also landed its second Athena lander in March, although in a toppled position just as with its first mission.
Japan last year became the world’s fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander.
The government last year signed an agreement with NASA to include Japanese astronauts in Artemis lunar missions and has supported private companies’ research projects for future lunar development, assuming ispace’s transportation capabilities.
“Expectations for ispace have not faded,” Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in an X post.
Although ispace will likely remain Japan’s most advanced lunar transportation company, some Japanese firms may start to consider transport options from foreign entities to test their lunar exploration visions, said Ritsumeikan University professor Kazuto Saiki, who was involved in the SLIM mission.
For its third mission in 2027, ispace’s U.S. unit is building a bigger lander as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program. The company projects six more missions in the U.S. and Japan through 2029.
“NASA increasingly needs private companies to improve cost efficiency for key missions with limited budgets,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts.
“To meet NASA’s expectations, we’ll support our U.S. subsidiary to keep up with development and play a role.”
($1 = 143.5600 yen)
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya in Tokyo; Editing by Kim Coghill, Matthew Lewis and Tom Hogue)
