Japan's HAKUTO-R M1 crashed during a lunar landing

Japanese start-up ispace failed to become the world's first private company whose spacecraft would have landed on the moon. HAKUTO-R M has crashed.

Here's What We Know

The landing module was travelling at around 6000 km/h at an altitude of 100 km above the lunar surface before entering the final phase. The spacecraft began to descend and dropped to about 30 km/h. Half an hour before landing, HAKUTO-R M1 was about 80 metres above the surface of the satellite.

Mission Control Centre lost contact with the spacecraft. A short time later, a Japanese startup said that the landing module had likely crashed. A few more hours later, an official statement was issued stating that the engines had shut down prematurely due to a lack of fuel. Eventually, HAKUTO-R M1 made a hard landing on the surface of an Earth satellite.

On board the landing module were the UAE-owned Rashid moon rover, a Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) robot and a battery developed by NGK Spark Plug Co. They were lost along with the HAKUTO-R M1.