By Marcia Dunn -
The Associated Press
A Japanese company lost contact with its spacecraft on Tuesday just before it landed, concluding that its attempt to be the first company to land a probe on the moon's surface had failed.
Communications were cut off when the module had 33 feet (10 meters) to descend from reaching the surface, traveling at about 16 miles per hour (25 kilometers per hour).
Flight controllers in Tokyo, Japan, stared blankly at their screens as minutes passed with no word from the lunar lander.
"We have to assume that we couldn't complete the moon landing," said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and director of the ispace company.
[Successfully launches Starship, the world's largest rocket, but fails to reach Earth orbit and explodes in midair]
A model of the HAKUTO-R private lunar spacecraft, on display at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, Japan. Eugene Hoshiko / AP
If it had landed, it would have been the first company to land a ship on the Moon.
Only three countries have achieved it: Russia, the US and China.
An Israeli nonprofit organization attempted to land on the moon in 2019, but its spacecraft was destroyed on impact.
The seven-foot (2.3-meter) long Japanese space module carried a United Arab Emirates mini-vehicle and a Japanese toy robot designed to roll around in lunar dust.
There were also items from private clients on board.
Named Hakuto, which means white rabbit in Japanese, the spacecraft had been aimed at the Atlas crater in the northeast of the Moon, 50 miles (87 kilometers) wide and one mile (2 kilometers) deep.
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The spacecraft took a long, indirect route to the Moon after liftoff in December, sending back photos of Earth along the way.
The lander entered lunar orbit on March 21.
For this test flight, the two main experiments were sponsored by governments: the 22-pound (10-kilogram) Rashid
rover
from the United Arab Emirates, named after the royal family of Dubai;
and the orange-sized sphere of the Japanese Space Agency designed to transform into a wheeled robot on the Moon.
With a scientific satellite already circling Mars and an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, the United Arab Emirates was looking to extend its presence to the Moon.
Founded in 2020, ispace aspires to become a kind of space taxi for companies and private organizations that want to take one-way trips to the Moon.
Hakada said that they are already working on a second mission to the Moon for next year.