Tokyo-based company Ispace said Friday that a lander named Resilience had dropped out of lunar orbit as planned, and the mission appears to be on track, Al Jazeera reported.
However, the flight controller lost contact with the resilience that was carrying the mini-rover after an hour of descent, before a scheduled touchdown on the moon. They tried to regain contact with Lander, and the ground support was filled with silence as the mission declared a failure hours later.
The company’s attempted livestream landing then ended abruptly.
“We have to take what happened seriously,” said Hakamada, CEO and founder of Ispace, who apologized to everyone who contributed after a failed mission.
This is the company’s second unsuccessful attempt to soften soft land on the moon two years after the first attempt by a Japanese startup to reach the moon ended with a collision landing.
MNA