A Japanese company’s bid to achieve history’s first commercial landing on the Moon was declared a failure on Wednesday after the module crashed on to the lunar surface.
The mission, which carried an autonomous rover partly designed by Sony and the toymaker Tomy, was masterminded by ispace, a start-up that listed on the Tokyo exchange two weeks ago and carried the hopes of thousands of retail investors and a Japanese nation desperate for success in outer space.
After a twice-postponed launch from Cape Canaveral in mid-December and a 384,000km journey through space, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 Lander lost contact with mission control just 90 metres from the Moon.
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