@nytimes: A Japanese company has lost contact with a small robotic spacecraft it was sending to the moon, a signal that it may have crashed into the lunar surface. After firing its main engine, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander built by Ispace of Japan dropped out of lunar orbit. About an hour later, at 12:40 p.m. Eastern time, the lander, about 7.5 feet tall, was to land in Atlas Crater, a 54-mile-wide feature in the northeast quadrant of the near side of the moon. But after the time of touchdown, no signal was received from the spacecraft. A pall of silence enveloped the control room in Tokyo where Ispace engineers, mostly young and from around the world, looked with concerned expressions at their screens. “At this moment, we have not been able to confirm successful landing on the lunar surface,” said Takeshi Hakamada, the chief executive of Ispace, a half-hour later during a live video stream. Thus, he said, they had to assume that the loss of communications meant “we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface.”

The New York Times

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Tuesday 25 April 2023 19:31:28 GMT