Latest news with #Ispace


UPI
24-06-2025
- Business
- UPI
Japan's ispace blames 'hard landing' on moon on Laser Range Finder
Japanese company ispace said the recent "hard landing" of its attempted lunar landing was due to a failure of the Laser Range Finder. File Photo by James Atoa/UPI | License Photo June 24 (UPI) -- Japanese company ispace said Tuesday that a "hard landing" during its attempted lunar landing in early June was due to an anomaly in the Laser Range Finder. In the analysis of the "SMBC X HAKUTO-R VENTURE MOON" mission 2 ispace said the hard landing was due to an "anomaly in the laser rangefinder hardware," and the telemetry data also revealed no issues with the lander's software or propulsion system. The LRF unit did not provide altitude measurement until it was less than half a mile off the ground. However, it was initially designed to provide altitude data when the spacecraft was at at least about 2 miles above the surface. Laser light reflected back to the lander, lower power of the laser, reduced performance at higher velocities or effects from the space environment, such as a vacuum or radiation are several factors that could have played a role in the performance of the LRF. "On June 6, despite the united efforts and dedication of the ispace team, our second attempt at a lunar landing was unsuccessful, resulting in deep disappointment," said Founder and CEO of Ispace Takeshi Hakamada. "We deeply regret that we were unable to meet the expectations of our shareholders, payload customers, HAKUTO-R partners, government officials, and all others who supported us." "Ispace will not let this be a setback. We will not stop here, but as determined pioneers of the cislunar economy, we will strive to regain the trust of all stakeholders and embark on the next mission. Chief technology officer at ispace Ryo Ujiie said the company was taking major steps to combat the problem. One is to conduct a better testing plan to see how the laser rangefinder operates under different conditions. The second is to look into getting a different laser rangefinder. These changes will not be in effect for missions 3 and 4, which are scheduled to launch in 2027. "We take it very seriously," Takeshi Hakamada, chief executive of ispace, said of the failed landings of its first two missions. "However, the important part is that we keep trying. There can be some failures, but we keep improving our systems." "Our primary goal today was to convey that ispace, as a challenger, is already moving forward towards its next mission," he said, vowing to regain the trust of its customers and other stakeholders. "We're committed to demonstrating that Ispace will continue to grow undeterred by this setback." "We take it very seriously," Takeshi Hakamada, chief executive of ispace, said of the failed landings of its first two missions. "However, the important part is that we keep trying. There can be some failures, but we keep improving our systems." "Our primary goal today was to convey that ispace, as a challenger, is already moving forward towards its next mission," he said, vowing to regain trust of its customers and other stakeholders. "We're committed to demonstrating that ispace will continue to grow undeterred by this setback."


Japan Times
24-06-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Ispace reveals cause of second lunar lander crash
Japanese startup Ispace has concluded that a hardware anomaly in a laser-based landing sensor caused the failure of its Mission 2 lunar landing earlier this month, the company announced Tuesday. The company's 'SMBC x Hakuto-R Venture Moon' lander, officially named Resilience, made a hard landing on the lunar surface in the early hours of June 6. After 18 days of technical review, Ispace concluded that the laser range finder (LRF) — a key sensor used to measure altitude during descent — failed to provide accurate data in the final phase of landing, leaving the lander unable to slow down in time. 'Despite the united efforts and dedication of the Ispace team, our second attempt at a lunar landing was unsuccessful,' said company CEO Takeshi Hakamada. 'We deeply regret that we were unable to meet the expectations of our shareholders, payload customers, Hakuto-R partners, government officials and all others who supported us.' According to Ispace, the LRF failed to detect a strong enough reflection from the lunar surface, resulting in the loss of reliable altitude measurements. The company ruled out software issues, propulsion failures and power system abnormalities as contributing factors. Telemetry data pointed to two likely causes: degraded sensor performance during flight or a hardware breakdown — not a software issue like the startup's first attempt with Mission 1, which also ended in a hard lunar landing in 2023. In a news conference Tuesday, the company's Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie stressed that the company had conducted verification testing, including outdoor trials, but said 'We need to reconsider how we operate.' Chief Technology Officer for Ispace Ryo Ujiie (left), founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada (center), and CFO and Director Jumpei Nozaki attend a press conference in Tokyo on June 6. | AFP-JIJI Lunar landing technology is highly complex, with a highly limited number of companies and facilities that have the capacity and knowledge to pull off a mission successfully. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully landed its unmanned probe 'SLIM' on the moon in January last year, with Japan joining the United States, Soviet Union, China, Russia and India as the only countries to achieve a lunar landing. However, due to an engine issue, SLIM touched down at an unexpected speed and altitude, causing it to land in an upside-down position with its solar cells facing west. As part of its measures to prevent another hard landing, Ispace plans to overhaul its landing sensor strategy, including a review of LRF configuration, selection and operations. The company will also convene an external review panel of third-party experts and expand collaboration with JAXA to strengthen its technical capabilities. The enhanced development and testing protocols are expected to increase costs by up to ¥1.5 billion ($10.3 million) for its next two missions: the Team Draper Commercial Mission 1 (Mission 3) and Mission 4. However, the company said the additional costs will be realized over time and will not affect its earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026. Ispace also reaffirmed that its future mission schedule remains unchanged, with its next landing attempt targeted for 2027. 'Ispace will not let this be a setback,' Hakamada said. 'We will not stop here, but as determined pioneers of the cislunar economy, we will strive to regain the trust of all stakeholders and embark on the next mission. Never quit the lunar quest.'


NZ Herald
10-06-2025
- Science
- NZ Herald
Do you see craters or bumps on the Moon's surface?
A picture of the Moon's south pole was taken in May by Resilience, a robotic lander operated by the Japanese company Ispace that probably crashed on the lunar surface last week. Some people see bumps, but others see craters. What you're seeing is known as the crater illusion, or sometimes
Yahoo
07-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
‘Never quit the lunar quest' was this moon mission's motto. Here's its tragic tale
Editor's note: A version of this story appeared in CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. As scientists search for worlds that may be habitable for life, they've discovered a type that is common in the universe — but doesn't exist in our own solar system. These enigmatic planets are called sub-Neptunes, which are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. An April study catapulted one such world, named K2-18b, into the spotlight. Astronomers at the University of Cambridge claimed they detected molecules in the planet's atmosphere that might be biosignatures — markers of biological activity that could hint at past or present life. Now, other groups of astronomers have looked at the same data and disagree with the findings, saying there is more to the story. The twists and turns in the ongoing conversation around planet K2-18b showcase why the search for evidence of life beyond Earth is so difficult. Indeed, persistence is everything when it comes to space investigation. 'Never quit the lunar quest' was the motto underpinning a high-stakes mission that aimed to touch down on the moon Thursday. But Tokyo-based Ispace lost contact with its vehicle at the time it should have landed. The Resilience spacecraft was Ispace's second bid at a soft lunar landing. The company's previous try with the Hakuto-R lunar lander crashed into the moon in April 2023. 'This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to really take it seriously,' said Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada of the nail-biting attempt. Ispace has its work cut out for it, but it isn't giving up. New research combining artificial intelligence with radiocarbon dating is changing the way scholars think about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls in 1947 within a cave in the Judaean Desert. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of scroll fragments, including the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, from 11 caves near the site of Khirbat Qumran. 'They completely changed the way we think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity,' said lead study author Mladen Popović, a dean at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Scholars thought the roughly 1,000 manuscripts, written mostly on parchment and papyrus, ranged from the third century BC to the second century AD. But some of the scrolls, which serve as a crucial intellectual time capsule, could be much older, the new analysis suggests. A World War I-era submarine was lost at sea off California's coast nearly 108 years ago, killing 19 crew members. Now, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have captured never-before-seen deep-sea imagery of the wreckage. The plague pandemic known as the Black Death killed at least 25 million people across medieval Europe over five years. The culprit behind the disease is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, which has led to three major plague outbreaks since the first century AD — and it still exists today. How has the plague persisted for centuries? Changes to one gene in the bacterium created new, less deadly strains that kept hosts alive longer so it could keep spreading. The weaker strains have since gone extinct, according to new research. But the findings could yield key clues to help scientists manage the current bacterium's dominant lineage, which is of the deadlier variety. If you've ever walked through a fruit orchard, you might have been steps away from a living tower of worms. That's what researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz in Germany found when they inspected rotten pears and apples. Hundreds of the microscopic worms, called nematodes, climbed on top of one another to form structures 10 times their size — even making a twisting 'arm' to sense the environment — leading scientists to question what's driving the behavior. 'What we got was more than just some worms standing on top of each other,' said senior study author Serena Ding, a Max Planck research group leader of genes and behavior. 'It's a coordinated superorganism, acting and moving as a whole.' These stories will pique your curiosity: — For over a century, astronomers thought the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies would collide in 4.5 billion years, but new telescope observations may change that. However, another galaxy could entangle with ours sooner. — Archaeologists who uncovered the remains of an ancient Mayan complex in Guatemala named the site after two humanlike rock figures that are believed to represent an 'ancestral couple,' according to the country's Ministry of Culture and Sport. — A fossil of the earliest known bird that was kept in a private collection for decades has provided scientists with 'one 'Wow!' after another,' including the first flight feathers seen in an Archaeopteryx specimen, said Dr. Jingmai O'Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum. Like what you've read? Oh, but there's more. Sign up here to receive in your inbox the next edition of Wonder Theory, brought to you by CNN Space and Science writers Ashley Strickland, Katie Hunt and Jackie Wattles. They find wonder in planets beyond our solar system and discoveries from the ancient world.


CNN
07-06-2025
- Science
- CNN
Moon lander is lost on second bid at touchdown by Tokyo-based company
As scientists search for worlds that may be habitable for life, they've discovered a type that is common in the universe — but doesn't exist in our own solar system. These enigmatic planets are called sub-Neptunes, which are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. An April study catapulted one such world, named K2-18b, into the spotlight. Astronomers at the University of Cambridge claimed they detected molecules in the planet's atmosphere that might be biosignatures — markers of biological activity that could hint at past or present life. Now, other groups of astronomers have looked at the same data and disagree with the findings, saying there is more to the story. The twists and turns in the ongoing conversation around planet K2-18b showcase why the search for evidence of life beyond Earth is so difficult. Indeed, persistence is everything when it comes to space investigation. 'Never quit the lunar quest' was the motto underpinning a high-stakes mission that aimed to touch down on the moon Thursday. But Tokyo-based Ispace lost contact with its vehicle at the time it should have landed. The Resilience spacecraft was Ispace's second bid at a soft lunar landing. The company's previous try with the Hakuto-R lunar lander crashed into the moon in April 2023. 'This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to really take it seriously,' said Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada of the nail-biting attempt. Ispace has its work cut out for it, but it isn't giving up. New research combining artificial intelligence with radiocarbon dating is changing the way scholars think about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bedouin shepherds first spotted the scrolls in 1947 within a cave in the Judaean Desert. Archaeologists then recovered thousands of scroll fragments, including the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible, from 11 caves near the site of Khirbat Qumran. 'They completely changed the way we think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity,' said lead study author Mladen Popović, a dean at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Scholars thought the roughly 1,000 manuscripts, written mostly on parchment and papyrus, ranged from the third century BC to the second century AD. But some of the scrolls, which serve as a crucial intellectual time capsule, could be much older, the new analysis suggests. A World War I-era submarine was lost at sea off California's coast nearly 108 years ago, killing 19 crew members. Now, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have captured never-before-seen deep-sea imagery of the wreckage. The plague pandemic known as the Black Death killed at least 25 million people across medieval Europe over five years. The culprit behind the disease is a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, which has led to three major plague outbreaks since the first century AD — and it still exists today. How has the plague persisted for centuries? Changes to one gene in the bacterium created new, less deadly strains that kept hosts alive longer so it could keep spreading. The weaker strains have since gone extinct, according to new research. But the findings could yield key clues to help scientists manage the current bacterium's dominant lineage, which is of the deadlier variety. If you've ever walked through a fruit orchard, you might have been steps away from a living tower of worms. That's what researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz in Germany found when they inspected rotten pears and apples. Hundreds of the microscopic worms, called nematodes, climbed on top of one another to form structures 10 times their size — even making a twisting 'arm' to sense the environment — leading scientists to question what's driving the behavior. 'What we got was more than just some worms standing on top of each other,' said senior study author Serena Ding, a Max Planck research group leader of genes and behavior. 'It's a coordinated superorganism, acting and moving as a whole.' These stories will pique your curiosity: — For over a century, astronomers thought the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies would collide in 4.5 billion years, but new telescope observations may change that. However, another galaxy could entangle with ours sooner. — Archaeologists who uncovered the remains of an ancient Mayan complex in Guatemala named the site after two humanlike rock figures that are believed to represent an 'ancestral couple,' according to the country's Ministry of Culture and Sport. — A fossil of the earliest known bird that was kept in a private collection for decades has provided scientists with 'one 'Wow!' after another,' including the first flight feathers seen in an Archaeopteryx specimen, said Dr. Jingmai O'Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum.