Silent on the Moon: Japan’s Resilience Lander Loses Contact
In an attempt to become the first private Japanese ship to make a gentle landing on the Moon, the Resilience lander started its descent from a 100-kilometer lunar orbit.
The Resilience spacecraft, constructed by the private company ispace, most certainly crashed during its landing attempt on the Moon’s Mare Frigoris region early Friday morning, seemingly bringing Japan’s ambitious lunar mission to a disappointing conclusion.
Although the mission’s fate is still officially unknown, worries over another unsuccessful landing have been heightened by a communication loss during the crucial last descent phase.
In an attempt to become the first private Japanese ship to make a gentle landing on the Moon, the Resilience lander started its descent from a 100-kilometer lunar orbit.
As the spacecraft neared the terminal approach, only five kilometres above the lunar surface, it successfully decelerated and pitched up, allowing mission control and people across the world to follow the stressful moments via ispace’s livestream.
However, telemetry data suddenly disappeared from the feed as the lander got closer to touchdown, and the video was abruptly cut off without any explanation.
Uncertainty was increased when ham radio operators keeping an eye on the mission verified that Resilience abruptly lost signal at the anticipated landing time.
This development is similar to iSpace’s initial attempt to reach the moon in 2023, which also ended in a crash due to a communication breakdown during descent.
Ispace has not yet made a formal announcement regarding the outcome, merely indicating that they are investigating the possibility that the spacecraft crashed or landed.
Takeshi Hakamada, the CEO of the firm, has previously stated that he hoped the trip would be a historic step towards creating a cislunar economy, with Resilience carrying science payloads together with a tiny rover and cooperative tools from worldwide partners.
The apparent failure underscores the enormous technological obstacles of lunar landings and is a blow for Japan’s private space industry.
The international space community awaits confirmation and study of the mishap as ispace looks into what went wrong during the last seconds of Resilience’s trek to the Moon.
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