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iSpace announced Wednesday in a statement that a Japanese startup vehicle that was preparing to land on the moon might have crashed. And “iSpace” said that there is a “high probability that the vehicle carried out a hard landing on the surface” of the moon and that it lost contact with the vehicle at the exact time of its landing. The robotic vehicle was carrying another lunar vehicle, the Emirati lunar explorer “Rashid”, which was designed and built by the United Arab Emirates.
It was seeking to become the first private enterprise to land a spacecraft on the moon Except it is It is likely to be thevehicle A subsidiary of a Japanese start-up company crashed during its attempt to land, according to what was announced by “iSpace”. (ispace) Wednesday, confirming its determination to prepare for other missions.
And “iSpace” stated in a statement that there is a “high probability that the vehicle carried out a hard landing on the surface” of the moon, noting that its engineers are trying to understand the reasons for this failure. The startup had previously announced that it had lost contact with the vehicle at the exact time of its landing.
This vehicle of the “Hakuto-R” program, which has been in the moon’s orbit for a month, about 100 km above its surface, began its landing attempt about an hour ago, through a fully automated process. Everything seemed to be going as planned, but after the scheduled landing time, around 16:40 GMT on Tuesday, the company’s ground teams tried in vain to reconnect with the company for about ten minutes.
“Although we do not believe that a landing is possible this time, we believe that this mission was of great importance, as it allowed the acquisition of a lot of data and experience,” said the company’s president and founder, Takeshi Hakamada. And he considered that “what is important is the use of this knowledge and this example in the second mission and what follows.”
He pointed out that the company is preparing for two new missions to try to land on the moon, and that the failure of the current mission will not change anything in its projects. The success of the mission was not originally guaranteed. In April 2019, the “Berecht” probe, which was manufactured by the Israeli company “SpaceIL”, crashed on the surface of the moon. Only the United States, Russia and China have so far been able to land robots on the moon, 400,000 km from Earth. In 2019, India also tried to land its Vikram probe, but it crashed.
Emirati Explorer “Rashid”
The Japanese vehicle, which measures two by two and a half meters, was launched in December from the American base of Cape Canaveral, carried on a SpaceX rocket.
The robot was carrying several lunar vehicles, including a Japanese scale model developed by the Japanese Space Agency in collaboration with toy maker Takara Tomy. He was also carrying another lunar vehicle, the Emirati Lunar Explorer “rightly guided” Designed and built by the United Arab Emirates. And if the ten-kilogram “Rashid” had succeeded in landing, he would have carried out the first Arab mission on the moon.
The “Hakuto” (“White Rabbit” in Japanese) project was one of five projects that reached the final stage of the international “Google Lunar Express” competition, for which no winner was announced, as no company was able to land a robot before the deadline (2018).
Two other companies, the American “Astrobotic” and “Intuitive Machines”, are scheduled to launch later this year two vehicles attempting to land on the moon. These operations are carried out in cooperation with the US Space Agency (NASA), which intends to develop the lunar economy, and entrusted private companies with transporting equipment and equipment for scientific experiments to the moon.
And the US agency seeks, through its “Artemis” program, to land astronauts again on the surface of the moon in the coming years, establish a base on it and build a space station in its orbit. Japan and the United States announced last year their intention to cooperate to send a Japanese astronaut to the moon by the end of the decade.
France 24/AFP
