Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to make history as only the third private firm -- and the first outside the United States -- to achieve a controlled touchdown on the lunar surface with its robotic lander.
Resilience began falling during the landing attempt, and mission control fired the engines to slow it down, he said.
The failure comes two years after a prior mission ended in a crash.
But the mood in mission control turned sombre, and around 15 minutes after the scheduled time, announcers on a livestream said attempts to communicate with the lander would continue.
On board the lander were several high-profile payloads: Tenacious, a Luxembourg-built micro rover; a water electrolyzer to split molecules into hydrogen and oxygen; a food production experiment; and a deep-space radiation probe.
- Lunar soil -
Though the samples would remain on the Moon, the symbolic transaction is meant to strengthen the US stance that commercial activity -- though not sovereign claims -- should be allowed on celestial bodies.
Now, private companies are joining the race, promising cheaper and more frequent access to space.
Then in March this year, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost -- launched on the same SpaceX rocket as ispace’s Resilience -- aced its lunar landing attempt.
Landing on the Moon is highly challenging as spacecraft must rely on precisely controlled thruster burning to slow their descent over treacherous terrain.
Its spacecraft Athena, designed to touch down on a spot called the Mons Mouton plateau -- closer to the lunar south pole than any previous mission -- tipped over and was unable to recharge its solar-powered batteries.
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