iSpace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) was declared an apparent failure after the controllers were unable to regain contact with the lander. According to the company, the failure had stemmed from a lack of propellant and the lander being in a vertical position on its final approach to the lunar surface.

The company failed to make history as the first private company to perform a successful lunar landing as its Hakuto-R lunar lander lost contact with its controllers during the final seconds of its descent.

M1 was expected to perform a soft landing in the Atlas crater in the Mare Frigoris region of the moon and perform operations for 10 days on the lunar surface in order to achieve the ninth and tenth mission milestones. While M1 was designed to showcase the viability of the company’s moon landing software it was also carrying multiple commercial and government payloads aboard.

Analyst QuickTake: Hakuto-R M1 was able to achieve eight out of its 10 milestones after launching in December 2022. While the company seemed to have failed to make history, this was only the first of three lunar missions that had been drawn out by the company with M2 and M3 slated for launch in 2024 and 2025, respectively. However, this allows Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines to ramp up its commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) missions and possibly overtake iSpace in the race to become the first private company to land successfully on the moon.