Japanese Lander Crashed While Descending on the Moon

On June 5th, Japanese lander Resilience seemingly crashed in the northern hemisphere of the lunar near side, the side facing the Earth, five hours after the landing time of 3:17 p.m. EDT. Ispace, the company that sent the spacecraft, said they did not get in contact with the lander when it fell.

During the time of descent, Ispace lost all contact with the spacecraft, causing the loss of valuable data on the lander’s performance and environment to be lost. According to the New York Times, some company officials stated that the descent was not slow enough, causing the lander to make a hard landing. Other issues also contributed to the crash. Ispace’s laser measurer is relatively slow at calibrating and could have led to the spacecraft’s downfall.

However, they still are uncertain what the definite cause could be. Takeshi Hakamada,

chief executive of Ispace, said to the New York Times, “At this point, we do not know clearly about the cause”.

In a previous mission, the team wanted the lander to reach the Atlas Crater, which is 54 miles wide. However, similar to the second mission, Ispace lost connection with the spacecraft when the lander started to descend. They originally planned to land their spacecraft in Lacus Somniorum but eventually changed it to Atlas Crater. However, they did not correctly change their software code after the change.

Subsequently, the lander incorrectly thought that it was lower on the ground than it actually was, so it evidently fell out of the atmosphere at 200 miles per hour.

Instead of the Atlas Crater, Resilience was aiming for Mare Frigoris, known as the “Sea of Cold”, on the near side of the moon in the northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, this second crash may make NASA, one of Ispace’s customers, reconsider its ideas to buy a larger lander pad from Ispace. They want NASA to keep on helping them but do not want to heavily rely on their assistance.

Ispace’s goal is to collect two soil samples: one from the rover and one from the material that lands on the spacecraft’s landing pads to sell them to NASA for a total of $10,000 in total.