A robotic lander developed by a Japanese company named ispace plummeted to the Moon's surface Thursday, destroying a small rover and several experiments intended to demonstrate how future missions could mine and harvest lunar resources.
Ground teams at ispace's mission control center in Tokyo lost contact with the Resilience lunar lander moments before it was supposed to touch down in a region called Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of Cold, a basaltic plain in the Moon's northern hemisphere.
A few hours later, ispace officials confirmed what many observers suspected. The mission was lost. It's the second time ispace has failed to land on the Moon in as many tries.