*

Tokyo-based ispace tried first non-US commercial moon

landing

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Moon lander Resilience likely made hard landing onto

surface

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Resilience carried Luxembourg-made rover, $16 million

payload

including from Taiwan

(Recasts with official confirmation that lander likely crashed

onto moon surface)

By Kantaro Komiya

TOKYO, June 6 (Reuters) - Japanese company ispace

said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the

moon's surface during its lunar touchdown attempt on Friday,

marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful

inaugural mission.

Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive

Machines ( LUNR ) and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have

accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon

which includes state-run missions from China and India. A

successful mission would have made ispace the first company

outside the U.S. to achieve a moon landing.

Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, could not

decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the

company has not been able to communicate with the spacecraft

after a likely hard landing, ispace said in a statement.

The company's live-stream of the attempted landing showed

Resilience's flight data was lost less than two minutes before

the planned touchdown time earlier on Friday.

The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain

about 900 km (560 miles) from the moon's north pole, and was on

an hour-long descent from lunar orbit.

A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders,

sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent during a

public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking

Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo.

Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders,

and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark

a 29% fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market

capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen ($766 million).

In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's

surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software

remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is

mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said.

Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by

ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth

a total of $16 million, including scientific instruments from

Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university.

If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high

lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of

planned exploration activities, including capturing images of

regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a

contract with U.S. space agency NASA.

Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with

Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to

the moon and touched down successfully in March.

Intuitive Machines ( LUNR ), which last year marked the world's first

touchdown of a commercial lunar lander, made its second attempt

in March but the lander Athena ended up on its side, just as in

the first mission.

Japan last year became the world's fifth country to achieve

a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United

States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace

Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander,

although in a toppled position.

Despite President Donald Trump's proposed changes to the

U.S. space policy, Japan remains committed to the American-led

Artemis moon program, pledging the involvement of Japanese

astronauts and technologies for future lunar missions.

Including a third one in 2027 as part of NASA's Commercial

Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program, ispace plans

seven more missions in the U.S. and Japan through 2029 to

capture increasing demands for lunar transportation.

($1 = 143.5600 yen)