Private Japanese spacecraft landing on the moon presumed to have crashed

Colombo (News 1^st) – The first privately-funded expedition to attempt a moon landing, Japan’s Hakuto-R spacecraft, is believed to have crashed on the moon on Tuesday, after contact with it was lost during the landing attempt, the Japanese company announced.

"We have not been able to confirm successful landing. We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface. Our engineers continue to investigate the situation," ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said.

Japan was attempting to become the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon, following the United States, Soviet Union and China.

The spacecraft was carrying the first mission of the United Arab Emirates’ fledgling space programme, a lunar rover named Rashid.

Hakuto-R and the Rashid rover were initially carried into space on a rocket owned by the private American company SpaceX, from Cape Canaveral in Florida on December 11, 2022.

The project by Japanese company ispace was the first attempted lunar landing by a commercial venture. Ispace plans to make lunar exploration commercially profitable by carrying customers’ satellites and lunar explorers to the moon.

The Rashid rover, the first Arab lunar spacecraft, was built at Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre. The 10kg rover was to mainly explore the moon's Atlas crater.