She was placed on the lunar surface or has it exploded During this perilous maneuver? The uncertainties around a Japanese private probe were at the highest Thursday, shortly after his programmed attempt to increase.
The machine, appointed resilience and developed by the Japanese company Ispace, was to land on the moon around 7:00 p.m. (GMT). But according to the live retransmission of the control center in Tokyo, his descent did not go as planned.
“We have not been able to confirm (the establishment), but the members of the mission control center will continue to try to get in touch with the probe,” the commentators said about 15 minutes after the theoretical increase time.
“We are confident in our preparations,” the CEO of Ispace said last week
The scientists, visibly tense, kept their eyes riveted on their control screens. Two years ago, the company had already led a first attempt at the establishment which had ended in a crash. If she succeeded on Thursday evening, she would have become the first non-American company to succeed in such a technical feat.
Self -maneuvers are extremely complex, due in particular to the absence of an atmosphere, which makes parachutes ineffective. The devices must operate their descent using propellants, all with extreme precision.
“We are confident in our preparations,” said the CEO of Ispace Takeshi Hakamada last week, ensuring that the company had “taken advantage of the experience acquired during mission 1 and the current trip to the moon”.
To date, only two American companies – intuitive machines and Firefly Aerospace – have managed to lay devices on the lunar surface without exploding them, two out of three, however, having aluni correctly, which affected their operation thereafter. Before them, only a handful of countries, starting with the Soviet Union in 1966, had succeeded. In January 2024, Japan joined this very closed club by succeeding in the establishment of a machine from the Japanese space agency, the Jaxa.
More and more private companies are looking to offer more frequent and less expensive spatial exploration opportunities than those carried out by various governments.
Blue Ghost had aluni without incident in early March
The resilience probe had been launched in January from the United States at the same time as the American space robot Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace, but the two devices did not follow the same trajectory and therefore did not take the same time to join the natural satellite of the earth. Blue Ghost had aluni without incident in early March.
The Japanese probe carries in particular a rover, scientific instruments developed by other companies, and a house model produced by a Swedish artist, Mikael Genberg. The objective displayed by Ispace is to perform, once the device on the star, various technological demonstrations.
At the same time, another Japanese start-up, Space One, tries to become the country’s first private enterprise to put an orbit satellite. During his last attempt, in December, the rocket took off, but the company had to interrupt the mission after the machine was seen losing altitude by turning.
