Artemis 1's tiny Japanese probe abandons moon landing try

A tiny Japanese moon lander won't make it to the lunar surface after all.

Trackers of the OMOTENASHI moon spacecraft, a rideshare with NASA's Artemis 1 mission that launched on Nov. 16, failed to pick up the cubesat's wobbly signal in time for its planned lunar landing, Japanese officials said on Twitter.

"Communication with the spacecraft could not be established, and it was determined that the lunar landing maneuver (DV2) operation could not be performed," the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) tweeted on Monday (Nov. 21). (Translation provided by Google.)

OMOTENASHI and nine other cubesats separated from the Artemis 1 Space Launch System rocket shortly after launch. The tiny Japanese flyer was spotted in space on Sunday (Nov. 20) and Monday, JAXA added, giving hope that it can be redirected to a new mission around March 2023, when communication conditions may improve. 

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In the meantime, an investigation is ongoing to find out why the little probe couldn't be hailed in time. Initial communications from a ground station suggested that the cubesat's solar cells were not facing the sun and it was rotating swiftly. The team tried to correct this by venting some fuel to counteract the movement, they wrote on Twitter, but "insufficient voltage" forced the team to turn off the transmitter.

The spacecraft, whose name is short for "Outstanding MOon exploration Technologies demonstrated by NAno Semi-Hard Impactor," was originally expected to attempt a hard landing from an altitude of 328 to 626 feet (100 to 200 meters) above the lunar surface. (The daring dive would have been cushioned with airbags and a shock absorption system to allow the spacecraft to survive the attempt.)

But now the cubesat is drifting alone in deep space, and for the next few months orbital dynamics between Earth and OMOTENASHI (along with sunlight conditions relative to the spacecraft's uncontrolled position) are not favorable to attempt a new mission. But those doors could open in the spring, mission officials added via Twitter.

Related: Japan's hopping rovers capture amazing views of asteroid Ryugu (video)

The cubesat, mission officials wrote in Japanese, "will fly by the moon, approach the Earth once, and then escape from the Earth's gravitational sphere." In March, the rotation of the spacecraft (assuming it remains consistent) should better align with the sun, allowing it to pull more power from solar radiation.

"We plan to resume exploration operations around that time, and once communication with the spacecraft is established, we would like to conduct tests that can be carried out in orbit," mission officials said. The tests will focus on tools to let small spacecraft explore far-out destinations in the future, they added, but little other information is available from the tweet thread.

While this Japanese landing on the moon didn't go to plan, the country did have success on an asteroid with Hayabusa2. In between the main sample-return mission, two near-twin rovers dropped onto the surface of the asteroid Ryugu in 2018 and explored, sending out footage as they hopped. OMOTENASHI would have been the country's first lunar lander, however.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.