Flight controllers lose contact with spacecraft moments before the planned touchdown.

A Japanese company has lost contact with its spacecraft moments before touchdown on the moon, saying the mission had apparently failed.

“We lost the communication, so we have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said on a company livestream on Tuesday, as mission control engineers in Tokyo continued to try to regain contact with the lander.

The M1 lander appeared set to touch down around 12:40 pm Eastern time (16:40 GMT Tuesday) after coming as close as 90m (295 feet) to the lunar surface, a live animation of the lander’s telemetry showed.

Communications then ceased as the lander descended the final 10m (33 feet), traveling around 25 km/h (16 mph). Flight controllers peered at their screens in Tokyo, expressionless, as the minutes went by with no word from the lander, which is presumed to have crashed.

The spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the US on a SpaceX rocket in December and has completed several mission objectives leading up to its landing attempt.

If it had landed, the company would have been the first private business to pull off a lunar landing.

White rabbit

Only three governments have successfully touched down on the moon: Russia, the United States and China. An Israeli non-profit tried to land on the moon in 2019, but its spacecraft was destroyed on impact.

The 2.3m (7-foot lander) Japanese lander carried a mini lunar rover for the United Arab Emirates and a toylike robot from Japan designed to roll around in the moon dust. There were also items from private customers on board.

Named Hakuto, Japanese for white rabbit, the spacecraft had targeted Atlas crater in the northeastern section of the moon’s near side, more than 87km (54 miles) across and just over 2km (1 mile) deep.

Hakuto took a long, roundabout route to the moon following its December lift-off, beaming back photos of Earth along the way.

With just 200 employees, ispace has said it “aims to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world by providing high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon”.

Ispace believes the moon will support a population of 1,000 people by 2040, with 10,000 more visiting each year.

It plans a second mission, tentatively scheduled for next year, involving both a lunar landing and the deployment of its own rover.