A Japanese startup appears to have failed in its effort to become the first to achieve a privately funded moon landing.
Tokyo-based ispace was attempting to land the Hakuto-R Series 1 lander on the surface of the moon at 9:40 p.m. PT on Tuesday, April 25 , but it lost contact with the vehicle at around that time.
Related It added: “Our engineers and mission operations specialists in our Mission Control Center are currently working to confirm the current status of the lander.” The mission, which began with a launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida in December, had planned to deploy two small rovers on the lunar surface: the Sora-Q for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the Rashid, built by the United Arab Emirates’ space agency.
Successfully putting a lander on the moon would not only have marked the first time for a privately funded effort to achieve such a feat, but would also have put Japan alongside only three other countries in achieving a successful lunar landing, with only the U.S., China, and the former Soviet Union have already done so.
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