ispace Lunar lander loses communication at last second

ispace’s HAKUTO-R lander, which was launched last December, attempted to land on the Moon today, April 25. The mission was looking likely to be the first commercial company to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon, but late in the landing phase, ispace lost communication with the uncrewed spacecraft.

ispace HAKUTA-R Launch

On December 11th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching out of SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station took flight, carrying ispace’s HAKUTA-R towards the Moon. It was set to be the first commercial Lunar lander as the company prepped for landing today, over four months later.

The launch of the Lunar lander featured a boost backburn and RTLS, where the Falcon 9’s first stage reignites its engines to return to the launch site, and then propulsively lands not far from where it took off, unlike most missions that feature landings out on drone ships in the Ocean. These RTLS landings require more fuel to execute, but in missions with lower mass payloads eliminate the cost of marine-based operations.

ispace Lunar landing

Only three countries have successfully landed spacecraft softly on the Moon’s surface, the US, China, and the former Soviet Union; while attempts by India and Israel ended in failure.

There were ten success milestones that ispace was looking to complete with mission one, starting with launch preps and working their way to success ten, “establishment of a system steady state after Lunar Landing.” They made it through success eight, completing all the orbit control maneuvers while in Lunar orbit. According to the livestream, the lunar lander was traveling at just 31km/h and 0.08Km above the Lunar surface when it received final telemetry before switching over to simulation due to a loss of communication. The CEO said during the landing livestream that have to assume that they did not complete the landing.

The lander carried with it the Rashid rover by the UAE and the SORA-Q robot by JAXA.

While this mission may have been unsuccessful in its final goal, the company was still receiving data through much of the landing procedure and can use that data to inform future HAKUTA-R missions, which they are expecting in both 2024 and 2025.