The moon will be a stepping stone for humans to travel to Mars and beyond in just one generation. This is the reason why the Artemis Mission is important for the United States with Russia as well as China also wanting to send humans back to the surface of the moon. Before this was done, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 mission to the moon was launched by ispace Inc. a private company from Japan with the aim of being the first private company to successfully place a landing vehicle (lander) on the surface of the moon.
However, this mission failed this morning when the Hakuto-R lunar landing vehicle lost contact with the control center during the landing process. The landing on the Mare Frigoris region of the moon was aborted when it was only about 30 feet away from the moon's surface.
Before contact was lost, Hakuto R was found to be moving faster instead of slower. Thus ispace engineers reached the conclusion their landing mission had failed. What happened to Hakuto R is still unknown with telemetry data still being analyzed. The failure of Mission 1 will be used to ensure that Mission 2 which will be launched in 2024 and Mission 3 in 2025 will not receive the same fate.
This morning's failure ended a mission that took more than four months. The Hakuto R lunar landing vehicle was launched on December 11 last year using a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket.