Europe will have to be more Tenacious to land its first rover on the moon

Europe likely just suffered a setback in its attempt to reach another milestone in the commercial race to use lunar resources. Tenacious, which was set to become the first European-made rover to land on the moon, was aboard a lander that lost contact during its landing attempt — a strong sign that something went wrong. If confirmed, this would be the second failed mission of the HAKUTO-R commercial lunar exploration program, two years after a previous crash that had already shattered hopes. This loss will be particularly felt in Japan; ispace, the company behind HAKUTO-R and the currently missing Resilience lander that carried Tenacious, is a publicly listed Japanese company. But it is also a blow to Europe: The European Space Agency (ESA) supported the mission; and the rover was designed, assembled, tested, and manufactured by ispace-EUROPE out of Luxembourg. Luxembourg isn’t just ispace-EUROPE’s base — it’s the reason the entity was created in 2017. As part of its SpaceResources.l ... Read full article.