Japan's hopes of achieving its first soft touchdown on the Moon by a private company were dashed Friday when the mission was aborted after an assumed crash-landing, the startup said.

Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to make history as only the third private firm -- and the first outside the United States -- to achieve a controlled arrival on the lunar surface.

But "based on the currently available data... it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing", the startup said.

"It is unlikely that communication with the lander will be restored" so "it has been decided to conclude the mission", ispace said in a statement.

The failure comes two years after a prior mission ended in a crash.

The company's unmanned Resilience spacecraft began its daunting final descent and "

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