Japan's Moon landing dream crashes, again

Japan's space programme faces a second fatal loss in two years as ispace's Resilience spacecraft crashed on the Moon during its highly-anticipated landing attempt on Friday, June 6, 2025.
The spacecraft was targeting to land on the Moon's Sea of Cold in the Northern Hemisphere when Mission Control in Tokyo lost communications and telemetry with the spacecraft.
ispace stated that the lander successfully began its descent phase from an altitude of 100 kilometres and all was well until the 20 kilometres mark above the Moon. The spacecraft successfully fired its engine at 20 kilometres altitude to begin deceleration.
The engineers later confirmed that the laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values. As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing and suffered a hard landing.
In 2023, the company's first spacecraft, Hakuto-R, crashed with the Rashid rover. The spacecraft experienced an unexpected acceleration on its way down to the surface.

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