Resilience Lander Experienced a "Hard Landing"
Laser Rangefinder Malfunction Cited as Cause of the Mishap
ispace suffered another setback Thursday when the Hakuto-R Lunar Lander was lost during its landing attempt.
Telemetry was lost from the lander about 65 seconds before the scheduled landing time. After a tense half hour, the ispace commentators on the company live YouTube stream said that the mission control team had been unable to establish communications with the lander.
"We haven't been able to confirm, but MCC members will continuously attempt to communicate with the lander. And we will be reporting to you the latest state in the media interviewing that's scheduled in a few hours. So we need to never quit the lunar quest," the moderators said through a translator.
ispace released a statement late Thursday saying that, based on the currently available data, the Mission Control Center has been able to confirm the following: The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values. As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing. Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.
After communication with the lander was lost, a command was sent to reboot the lander, but communication was unable to be re-established.
“Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause,” said Takeshi Hakamada, Founder and CEO of ispace. “We will strive to restore trust by providing a report of the findings to our shareholders, payload customers, HAKUTO-R partners, government officials, and all supporters of ispace.”
The result was almost exactly the same as the previous ispace attempt to land on the Moon in April, 2023. On the Hakuto-R Mission 1, telemetry was lost with the lander just before it was scheduled to land on the lunar surface.