ISPACE LANDER HAKUTO-R crashed during the wing. An error in the sensors caused the loss of control. No contact has been restored.
It was one night of hope at the ISPApieth Quartier. After months of preparations, the Lander Resilience he was ready for his historic arrival on the Moon. But when the crucial moment came, something went wrong. The data immediately showed a sudden loss of communication: the Lander would no longer spoke to the Earth.
A hard impact
The Lander, who had to put himself gently on the lunar surface, lived a tragic fate, reminiscent of that of his predecessor in 2023. A anomaly in the descent phase has compromised the navigation systems, causing an uncontrolled impact. The rover Rashidwhich should have explored lunar soil, has never been released. Any attempt to restore contact proved to be in vain.
What really happened
In the ISPA control center, silence replaced enthusiasm. The looks full of waiting have turned into disbelief and disappointment. After a few hours, a first dynamic of the incident was reconstructed.
At 3:13 on June 6, 2025 (20:13 in Italy), ISPACE engineers at the Hakuto-R Mission Control Center of Nihonbashi, Tokyo, sent the controls to start the landing sequence. The Lander began the descent, going from 100 to 20 km altitude, correctly activating the main engine for the deceleration phase.
Although the structure was almost vertical, the telemetry was lost. No data confirmed a successful wing, not even after the expected deadline of the maneuver. The data show that the laser telemeter – in charge of measuring the distance from the surface – recorded delays in providing valid values. The Lander, therefore, has not slowed down enough To touch the soil in a controlled way. It is believed to have carried out a impact violent with the lunar surface.
After the interruption of communications, the technicians sent a Restart command. But no response has arrived.
It starts again, despite everything
«At the moment, we exclude that the landing has succeeded. Our priority is to analyze telemetry data to identify the cause of the problem, “said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ISPA. «We are determined to restore trust, providing a detailed report to our shareholders, to payload customers (the cargo transported, ed), to Hakuto-R partners, to government representatives and all those who support us ».
For many of the technical team it is a hard blowespecially after the difficulties of the first mission. But the group has already set out to work to analyze what happened.
