Spanish
Tokyo (EFE).- The Japanese company ispace, which aimed for its Resilience module to be the first from Japan's private sector and Asia to reach the Moon's surface, declared the mission a failure this Friday after being unable to establish communication with the device hours after the maneuver.
The Resilience module initiated the lunar landing sequence as planned in the Japanese early morning, but the control center on Earth was unable to establish communication after this phase.
"At 8:00 local time (23:00 GMT on Thursday) June 6, 2025, mission controllers determined that communication with the lander is unlikely to be restored and, therefore, it is not possible to complete (the step) Success 9 (the penultimate). The mission has been decided to be concluded," the firm said in a statement.
Engineers at the Hakuto-R mission control center in Nihombashi, Tokyo, transmitted the orders to execute the lunar landing sequence at 3:13 local time (18:13 GMT Thursday) and the Resilience initiated the descent phase."The module descended from an approximate altitude of 100 kilometers to about 20 km and then successfully ignited its main engine, as planned, to begin deceleration," the company detailed about how the operation unfolded.
While it was confirmed that the module's attitude was almost vertical, telemetry was subsequently lost and no data was received indicating a successful landing.
The chronology of the lunar landing attempt
According to the analysis carried out by the control center with the available data, the laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values and, as a result, the landing module was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned landing.
"Based on these circumstances, it is assumed that the lander likely made a hard landing on the lunar surface," determined the ispace team, which currently has no further details about the fate and state of the module.
"Given that there are currently no prospects for a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to quickly analyze the telemetry data obtained so far and work diligently to identify the cause," said ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada, in the text and in a press conference alongside other visibly affected mission members.
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The Resilience was scheduled to land at 4:17 local time this Friday (19:17 GMT Thursday) and the operation was being broadcast live over the internet and in person at its headquarters in Tokyo and its global subsidiaries, in a broadcast that began full of optimism after the failure of two years ago.
About 20 minutes after the scheduled time for the landing, one of the people in charge of the broadcast indicated that contact with the device had not yet been confirmed, but that the members of the control would continue trying to communicate with it, and shortly after the live broadcast ended.What happened is similar to what already occurred in April 2023, when the first Hakuto-R mission (this was the second) ended in failure by losing communication moments before the lunar landing.
