Rashid Rover's Moon Landing: Failure but Still Big Leap Achievement

Farewell HAKUTO-R lander and Rashid rover. The spacecraft that had been sent to the Moon to explore in peace shall now rest in peace. MBRSC says ispace mission control centre continues investigation.

Tokyo-based Ispace Inc. said it lost contact with a lander bound for the moon and that the craft, which didn’t have anyone on board, likely crashed, a big setback for the company’s efforts in space transportation and Japan’s push into the cosmos more broadly. iSpace, which listed in a keenly watched IPO just 10 trading sessions ago. Shares had surged to around 8x the IPO price before last night's likely failure.

Ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander was scheduled to touch down early Wednesday morning Japan time, in what would have been among the very first commercial space attempts to place a lander on the moon intact. But communication was lost shortly after engineers confirmed the lander was in a vertical position on the final approach.

Stay positive despite failure, maybe HAKUTO-R captured a rare footage about the moon. The UAE's Rashid rover and other payloads will also be lost. Landing on the Moon is incredibly hard, even in 2023. Finger's crossed communication is miraculously recovered but if not, if nothing else, it provided us with this stunning image. Despite the unfortunate outcome of the Rashid Rover mission, it's important to remember that in space, every attempt is a step forward. The data and lessons learned from this mission will only help us create better and more successful missions in the future.

HAKUTO-R hard landing then destroyed when another one bites the regolith years ago. 2019 Beresheet also failed. 2019 Vikram also failed. But still an exciting accomplishment for the UAE. 

This is just 2nd accomplishment by UAE in last 2 months about airspace attempt. March 2nd, Astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi and his Crew-6 colleagues succesfully heading to the Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.