Japan s ispace loses communication with moon lander after touchdown attempt

TOKYO - Tokyo-based ispace Inc. said it will not be able to restore contact with its lunar lander, a blow to Japan’s burgeoning commercial space industry.

Ispace’s Resilience lander was expected to touch down on the moon at 4 am Japan time (Singapore time 3 am) on June 6, but the company ended its live stream of the landing attempt – watched by more than 17,000 people – after losing contact. The company’s stock price was awash with sell orders at the Tokyo market open.

“There is a high possibility the lander made a hard landing on the moon,” founder and Chief Executive Officer Takeshi Hakamada said at a press conference, adding that the lander may not have had time to adequately decelerate. “What’s important is to use what we learned in our next steps.”

The mission follows a failed attempt in 2023 when a programming error led to a crash of the spacecraft. If the attempt had succeeded, ispace would have been the first non-US company to park a spacecraft safely on the moon. Texas-based rivals Intuitive Machines Inc. and Firefly Aerospace Inc. have already done so, as countries race to explore the moon.

The Japanese lander launched into space aboard one of Elon Musk-led SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets in January. The rocket also launched a lander from Firefly that touched down on the lunar surface in March.

Resilience was expected to dispatch its rover, named Tenacious, which is equipped with a high-definition camera and a shovel to collect lunar regolith and transmit data back to the lander. Ispace signed a contract in 2020 with Nasa to provide the US agency with regolith collected on the moon’s surface.

Aboard the lander are customer payloads with varying purposes including a commemorative plate from Bandai Namco Research Institute Inc. – an