Japanese company iSpace has said its unmanned spacecraft likely crashed while attempting to land on the moon, the company’s second failure after a failed mission two years ago.
iSpace, which was aiming to join the ranks of successful American companies in commercial spacecraft landings on the moon, has lost contact with its spacecraft, Resilience, due to problems measuring the distance and not slowing down the landing speed.
The spacecraft carried a four-wheeled Luxembourg robot and five foreign devices worth $16 million and was scheduled to operate on a 14-day mission in collaboration with NASA.
Although the failure will put Japan’s commercial access to the Moon on hold for several years, the country will continue NASA’s Artemis program and the development of space exploration, with iSpace planning a larger mission in 2027.
Japanese PM: Expectations from iSpace still remain
