A Japanese space company has blamed a malfunctioning laser range finder for the crash of its moon lander earlier this month, marking the second failed lunar landing attempt for ispace in just over two years.
The company’s uncrewed lander, named Resilience, was attempting to touch down near the moon’s Mare Frigoris, or 'Sea of Cold', when contact was lost during its final descent. Officials revealed Tuesday that the laser navigation tool responsible for gauging altitude was delayed in activating, causing the spacecraft to misjudge its altitude and crash at a speed of 42 metres per second (138 feet per second).
Images of the wreckage, captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter last week, confirmed the crash site.
“Unfortunately, the laser range finder failed to operate properly at the critical moment,” said ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.
“We acknowledge the issue and are moving forward with necessary improvements.”
In 2023, ispace lost its first lander to a software error that also occurred during the final landing phase. Despite the back-to-back losses, Hakamada said the company remains committed to its lunar programme and confirmed plans for a third mission in 2027 and a fourth mission in development. These future landings are being planned in cooperation with NASA and will undergo enhanced testing protocols.
The setbacks come as part of a broader international effort to enable commercial lunar missions. Of the seven attempts by private companies to land on the moon in recent years, only one—Texas-based Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander in March 2025—has succeeded. Blue Ghost had launched aboard the same SpaceX rocket as Resilience back in January.
Outside of the private sector, only five countries have successfully landed spacecraft on the moon: the U.S., Soviet Union, China, India and Japan. However, the U.S. remains the only nation to have landed astronauts there, a feat last achieved more than 50 years ago during NASA’s Apollo programme.
Ispace says it will now invest an additional 1.5 billion yen (approximately $10 million) to upgrade its lander systems. The company also confirmed that external experts will join its failure review board, and that it will deepen collaboration with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
“We haven’t stepped down in the face of setbacks,” said Hakamada. “We are firmly committed to taking the next step toward the future of lunar exploration.”
Kabul was rocked by a powerful explosion late Thursday night, with multiple witnesses reporting the sound of fighter jets flying over the city’s air...
Large parts of Kyiv were plunged into darkness in the early hours of Friday after Russian drones and missiles struck Ukrainian energy facilities, cutt...
Georgia’s political crisis has intensified following the 4th October local elections and a protest in Tbilisi that ended in clashes and mass arrests...
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting democratic rights in her country and her struggle ...
Israeli troops began pulling back from some parts of Gaza on Friday at midday under a ceasefire deal with Hamas according to Israeli military official...
Kabul was rocked by a powerful explosion late Thursday night, with multiple witnesses reporting the sound of fighter jets flying over the city’s airspace.
Large parts of Kyiv were plunged into darkness in the early hours of Friday after Russian drones and missiles struck Ukrainian energy facilities, cutting power and water to homes and halting a key metro link across the Dnipro river.
Georgia’s political crisis has intensified following the 4th October local elections and a protest in Tbilisi that ended in clashes and mass arrests.
Today, 10 October, the CIS Heads of State Council meeting is underway in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, in a limited format attended by leaders from member states.
Video from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) showed on Friday (19 September) the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupting and spewing lava.
At least eight people have died and more than 90 others were injured following a catastrophic gas tanker explosion on a major highway in Mexico City’s Iztapalapa district on Wednesday, authorities confirmed.
At least 69 people have died and almost 150 injured following a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Cebu City in the central Visayas region of the Philippines, officials said, making it one of the country’s deadliest disasters this year.
Authorities in California have identified the dismembered body discovered in a Tesla registered to singer D4vd as 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, who had been missing from Lake Elsinore since April 2024.
A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on 13 September with no tsunami threat, coming just weeks after the region endured a devastating 8.8-magnitude quake — the strongest since 1952.
From Sunday, all non-EU citizens, including British visitors, will face new biometric checks when entering and exiting the European Union under its long-delayed Entry/Exit System (EES).
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa of Kyoto University, Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, and Omar Yaghi of the University of California.
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis for their groundbreaking discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in electric circuits.
United States chipmaker AMD will supply artificial intelligence chips to OpenAI in a multi-year agreement that could generate tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue and give the ChatGPT maker the option to acquire up to 10% of the company.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 has been awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell, and Shimon Sakaguchi for their ground breaking discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance.
You can download the AnewZ application from Play Store and the App Store.
What is your opinion on this topic?
Leave the first comment