A Lunar Landing Attempt, and a Social Media Spat Over SpaceX

ispace suffered another setback Thursday when the HAKUTO-R Lunar Lander was apparently lost during its landing attempt.

Telemetry was lost from the lander about 65 seconds before the scheduled landing time. After a tense half hour, the ispace commentators on the company live YouTube stream said that the mission control team had been unable to establish communications with the lander.

"We haven't been able to confirm, but MCC members will continuously attempt to communicate with the lander. And we will be reporting to you the latest state in the media interviewing that's scheduled in a few hours. So we need to never quit the lunar quest," the moderators said through a translator.

ispace released a statement late Thursday saying that, based on the currently available data, the Mission Control Center has been able to confirm the following: The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values. As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing. Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.

After communication with the lander was lost, a command was sent to reboot the lander, but communication was unable to be re-established.

The result was almost exactly the same as the previous ispace attempt to land on the Moon in April, 2023. On the HAKUTO-R Mission 1, telemetry was lost with the lander just before it was scheduled to land on the lunar surface.

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The FAA is requiring SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation for the Starship Flight 9 mission that launched on May 27 from Starbase, Texas.

All Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster debris landed within the designated hazard areas. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property.

The mishap investigation is focused only on the loss of the Starship vehicle which did not complete its launch or reentry as planned. The FAA determined that the loss of the Super Heavy booster is covered by one of the approved test induced damage exceptions requested by SpaceX for certain flight events and system components. The FAA evaluated each exception prior to launch approval and verified they met public safety requirements.

The FAA approved test induced damage exceptions for the Super Heavy booster including failure of the grid fin system, poor engine initialization during the landing burn, and a hard water impact due to insufficient engine thrust. It also induced damage exceptions for the Starship vehicle including engine failure during either the in-space burn or the landing burn and failure of either the thermal shield or the flap system during reentry. The loss of the Starship vehicle did not involve any exception.

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A non-binding letter of intent for a proposed business combination has been jointly announced by the special purpose acquisition company ... or SPAC ... BPGC Acquisition Corp. ("BPGC"), and reusable space launch developer iRocket.

The parties have agreed on certain key terms of the proposed business combination and executed a non-binding letter of intent. Under the terms of the letter of intent, iRocket and BPGC would become a combined entity, with iRocket's existing shareholders exchanging their shares in iRocket for equity in the combined public company.

The letter of intent contemplates a pre-money equity value of iRocket of $400 million, before potential earnouts based on share price performance. The parties will a