Tag: landing
Former X Factor star set for Hollywood after landing lead role on two Netflix series
singing competition the X Factor as part of band Only The Young in 2014, but she has shifted her focus into acting after moving to Los Angeles
Mae Muller says she’s ‘disappointed but proud’ after landing second last in Eurovision
Market Extra: Stanley Druckenmiller warns of U.S. hard landing at Sohn conference, says debt-ceiling debate ‘really depressing’
Famed investor Stan Druckenmiller sees hard landing coming (update)
Commercial Moon Landing Attempt Failed: What Happened To The Lunar Craft?
The long-awaited attempt to land a privately funded spacecraft on the Moon seems to have failed, with the fate of…
The post Commercial Moon Landing Attempt Failed: What Happened To The Lunar Craft? appeared first on TechRound.
Japan’s first Moon landing has ended in failure
What would have been the first private Moon landing has ended in failure after Japanese startup ispace lost contact with its lunar lander, as reported earlier by The Washington Post. As the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander inched closer to the Moon’s surface, engineers found that they were no longer able to communicate with the spacecraft.
“Currently, we have not confirmed communications from the lander,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a livestream of the mission. “So we have to assume that we could not complete the landing.”
Our engineers and mission operations specialists in our MCC are currently working to confirm the current status of the lander. Further information on the status of the lander will be announced as it becomes…
Private company’s daring moon landing likely just failed
A Japanese company likely crashed a spacecraft into the moon as it attempted a soft landing Tuesday, causing an abrupt end to its five-month journey from launch pad to the lunar surface.
The company, ispace, invited the world to watch alongside its Tokyo-based mission control through a livestream of the event on April 25. The nail-biting landing sequence lasted about an hour as the robotic spacecraft performed a braking engine burn and followed automated commands to adjust the Hakuto-R lander’s orientation and speed to touch down.
As the spacecraft descended, mission control had communication with it. But after the maneuvers were completed, the team lost contact with the lander. With a room full of visibly disappointed engineers, ispace officials said they had to assume the landing was unsuccessful. But they’ll continue to investigate the status of the lander, said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace.
“At this moment, what I can tell is we are very proud of the fact that we have already achieved many things during this Mission 1,” he said. “We acquired actual flight data during the landing phase. That is a great achievement for the future missions.”
Though 60 years have passed since the first uncrewed moon landings, it remains a daunting task, with less than half of missions succeeding. Unlike on Earth, the moon’s atmosphere is very thin, providing virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Moreover, there is no GPS system on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. Engineers have to compensate for these shortcomings from 239,000 miles away.
“We cannot emulate all the environment of the moon on the Earth before the mission,” Hakamada told Mashable in an interview hours after the event, still without an update on the lander’s status. “So we have to rely on all the simulations and then a lot of assumptions.”
Credit: ispace / YouTube screenshot
Want more science and tech news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter today.
This is not the first time the private sector has attempted to get to the moon. For example, in 2019 an Israeli nonprofit and company collaborated on the $100 million Beresheet mission, which crashed on the lunar surface after an orientation component failed. The mishap potentially scattered some intriguing artifacts on the lunar surface in the process.
For one of ispace’s payload customers, a failed landing would mean the indefinite postponement of another dream: the first Arab moon mission. The ispace lander was supposed to deliver the United Arab Emirates’ Rashid rover to the moon, which would explore the Atlas Crater. Along with the Emirati rover, a Japanese space program robot was on board.
Hakuto-R is the first of many other commercial missions that are expected to attempt this feat soon, many of which are an outgrowth of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. The program was established in 2018 to recruit the private sector to help deliver cargo to the moon. Ispace couldn’t directly participate in the NASA program because it isn’t an American company, but it is collaborating on one of the contracts led by Draper Technologies in Massachusetts, expected to land on the moon in 2025.
These upcoming missions will support the U.S. space agency’s lunar ambitions, shipping supplies and experiments to the surface ahead of astronauts’ arrival in 2025 or later. They’re also expected to kickstart a future cislunar economy, referring to the business potential of ventures on the moon and in the space between Earth and the moon.
Credit: ispace
“The environment has changed since I established this company 13 years ago,” Hakamada said. “This is a great market opportunity for a company like us.”
The executive said he wasn’t deterred by the uncertain outcome of the company’s first attempted landing. The data will help the business prepare for its next two upcoming missions, he said.
And he had no regrets about allowing the general public to watch the attempt in real time.
“We tried to be transparent to the world. That will, we believe, (help us) gain more trust in our business and technology,” Hakamada said. “Many people will be given the impression that this is real, and this will pave the way for the greater development of the cislunar ecosystem.”
Which will be the first to make the journey intact? The commercial race is on, with many more opportunities approaching.
“History can be made only by those who (face) challenges, and challenges will not be possible without taking a risk,” said Yuichi Tsuda, a professor of astronautical science at Tokyo University, during the live broadcast. “The risk can be taken only by those who dream. So ispace teams, you are all excellent dreamers.”
This story has been updated from a previous version to include an interview with ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.
How to watch first privately funded moon landing on Tuesday
A daring company is about to try landing on the moon. You can watch it.
Other space ventures and spacefaring nations have tried and failed before.
Undeterred by previous flops, a Japanese company will attempt to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon. If it succeeds, ispace could claim the first commercial lunar landing in history.
The company will broadcast the event live at 11:40 a.m. ET April 25, 2023, giving viewers a peek behind the curtains at mission control in Tokyo as engineers oversee the challenging feat. Lunar landings are rare in and of themselves, let alone opportunities for the public to watch them unfold in real time.
The mission, known as HAKUTO-R, is one of several commercial lunar missions happening soon. Others in the pipeline are an outgrowth of NASA‘s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, established in 2018 to recruit the private sector to help deliver cargo to the moon. ispace, a startup specializing in landing vehicles, couldn’t directly participate in the NASA program because it isn’t an American company, but it is collaborating on a contract led by Draper Technologies based in Massachusetts to land on the moon in 2025.
All these upcoming missions are expected to support the U.S. space agency’s lunar ambitions, shipping supplies and experiments to the surface ahead of astronauts’ arrival in 2025 or later, as well as kickstarting a future lunar economy. For this first attempt by ispace, NASA has a contract to buy lunar dust samples collected during the mission. HAKUTO-R is carrying cargo for several other customers as well: It will try to deliver two rovers, one each from the Emirati and Japanese space programs, to the surface.
“I see this as the beginning of a new phase of commercial missions to the (moon) with 3 #CLPS launches expected from (the United States) in 2023,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s former head of science, in a tweet.
“I see this as the beginning of a new phase of commercial missions to the (moon) with 3 #CLPS launches expected from (the United States) in 2023.”
Credit: ispace
Ispace’s attempt to land on the moon will be livestreamed on Youtube. If conditions change, the team has pinpointed three alternative lunar landing sites. Depending on the location, the landing date could change, officials said. Fallbacks are slated for April 26, May 1, and May 3.
During the landing sequence, the spacecraft will perform a braking engine burn to slow down from orbit. With a series of pre-set commands, the lander will adjust its orientation and speed in order to touch down softly on the lunar surface. The process is expected to take about one hour.
People around the world tuning into the livestream will have a view inside the company’s Tokyo mission control center. The broadcast will also include live and pre-recorded interviews. If the landing is successful, ispace will provide visual confirmation of the spacecraft on the moon, company spokesman Andrew Ames told Mashable.
HAKUTO-R originated from the Google Lunar XPrize competition, which offered $20 million to the first private spacecraft developer to land, travel 500 meters, and beam back video from the moon. The deal expired before any of the competitors involved made it.
After launching in December 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the spacecraft has been on a lengthy, five-month journey to the moon to save on fuel costs. It completed a successful orbital injection maneuver, which propelled HAKUTO-R into lunar orbit, on March 21 and its final maneuver prior to landing on April 13.
Want more science and tech news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter today.
This is not the first time the private sector has attempted the feat: In 2019, an Israeli nonprofit and company collaborated on the $100 million Beresheet mission, which sought to land on the moon. As the spacecraft descended, an orientation component failed, causing the main engine to cut out.
Mission controllers attempted to reset the spacecraft, but by the time the engine came back on, it was too late: Engineers had lost communication with the vehicle. It crashed into the moon and may have scattered some intriguing artifacts, such as microscopic tardigrades, aka “water bears,” suspended in epoxy. Nova Spivack, co-founder of the Arch Mission Foundation that made the payload, told a Mashable reporter four years ago he hadn’t informed the Beresheet team he was adding the creatures to their cargo.
Brad Jolliff, director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, believes the next five years will see a flurry of other commercial companies following suit, lugging cargo to the moon, and facilitating science experiments.
“There’s a business case for the moon,” Jolliff told Mashable in a previous interview. This new era of lunar exploration and travel “won’t be done entirely by NASA, it will be done with international partners and with commercial partners.”