iSpace: Japan’s Moon Lander Assumed To Be Lost After Attempted Landing

Tokyo-based iSpace’s mission control lost contact with its lander Hakuto -R, on Tuesday. The lander appeared to have crashed on the moon surface following a landing attempt.

Communication was lost with Hakuto-R moments before it was due to touch down at approximately 16:40 GMT on Tuesday.

"It has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the Moon's surface," iSpace said in a statement.

iSpace’s Hakuta-R mission was poised to become the first commercial space attempt to place a lander on the moon.

The lander was launched in December by one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets.

Conceding the failure, iSpace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said, "What is important is to feed this knowledge and learning back to Mission 2 and beyond."

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