Newscasts - What next for Japan's lunar ambitions after ispace fails to touchdown

Ispace

06/06/2025 11:41

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Source: 'Reuters - Business videos'

Description: Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt on Friday (June 6). The failure means another multi-year pause in Japan's commercial access to the moon, although the country remains committed to the U.S.-led Artemis program. Ciara Lee reports.

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Video Transcript:

A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors, and Japanese government officials abruptly grew silent on Friday. Flight data from the company's moon lander was lost less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown. Japanese firm ispace said the uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the lunar surface. Marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.

As of 8:00AM this morning, we anticipate that communications with the lander will not be restored and that it will not therefore be possible to complete Mission 2 milestone Success 9 to confirm a landing on the surface of the moon. It's been decided that the mission will conclude.

Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings. And it comes amid a global race including state-run lunar missions from China and India. The failure means another multi-year pause in Japan's commercial access to the moon. Although the country remains committed to the US-led Artemis program. And a wide range of Japanese companies are studying lunar exploration as a business frontier. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface. It could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said. Adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing. Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders. And looked set to close at the daily limit low, which would mark a 29% fall. For its third mission in 2027, ispace's US unit is building a bigger lander. It's part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program. The company projects six more missions in the US and Japan through 2029.