Photo/Illutration Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace Inc., speaks at a company event about its lunar lander in Tokyo on April 26. (Jin Nishioka)

A Japanese lunar lander unexpectedly accelerated on its descent and apparently crashed into the moon early on April 26, space startup company ispace Inc. said.

Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, said at a news conference that the company has confirmed the Hakuto-R lunar lander could not complete the landing.

The company said all communication between Hakuto-R and flight controllers was lost just before it was scheduled to touch down on the moon’s surface at 1:40 a.m. on April 26.

Tokyo-based ispace was attempting to become the world’s first private business to land a space craft on the moon.

The unmanned lunar lander was launched in December aboard a Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX in Florida.

The lunar craft was carrying seven items, including a moon exploration robot created by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and major toy company Tomy Co., and a lunar rover developed by the United Arab Emirates.

Under the plan, the robot and rover were to be deployed on the moon’s surface after the landing and be powered by electricity through Hakuto-R. Information collected would be sent to Earth through communication devices aboard the lunar lander.

The lander started descending from around 100 kilometers above the surface at 12:40 a.m. on April 26.

As it approached the moon, its engines were reversed to reduce speed and adjust its position so that the engine nozzle would face the lunar surface.

The company determined from data that the descending speed of the lander quickly increased, leading to a likely “hard landing.”

The company said it is analyzing available data to determine what happened.

Hakuto-R had been flying in space for four and a half months. It did not travel directly to the moon to save fuel.

Instead, it took a wide trajectory to a point around 1.376 million km from Earth before its return approach to the moon.

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