Using a rover built in the United Arab Emirates, a Japanese lunar lander attempted to land on the moon.
About 30 minutes into a broadcast of the event, the Ispace lander was believed to have touched down on the lunar surface. However, CEO Takeshi Hakamada reported that the engineers were unable to establish a successful landing after a lengthy confirmation period.
First commercial lunar lander, Hakuto-R
The lander, which was constructed by a Japanese company called Ispace, was launched on December 11 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a rocket made by SpaceX.
The spacecraft used a low-energy trajectory to travel 383,000 kilometers (239,000 miles) to the moon and enter lunar orbit. Possible first commercially developed spacecraft lunar landing.
After an expected communications outage, the mission control team labored for many minutes to establish contact with the vehicle again.
Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of Ispace, provided an update roughly 20 minutes after the initial estimate for landing.
Hakuto-R, the lunar lander, carried the Rashid rover, which was developed by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai and was the first Arab-built lunar spacecraft.
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Other Attempts to Land on the Moon
Ispace, a Japanese firm, was one of many that attempted to win the $20 million Google Lunar XPrize by sending a robotic rover to the moon, having it go a few hundred feet before sending data back to Earth.
In 2018, Google decided to cancel the competition it had been sponsoring, although Ispace was one of the companies that decided to keep working toward its original goal.
The Israeli firm SpaceIL made the first post-program effort to land a lander on the moon using the XPrize. After losing touch with the lander as it neared the surface in 2019, the Beresheet spacecraft crashed.
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