At the end of last year, ispace sent the HAKUTO-R M1 module to the moon. Unfortunately he crashed during landing. About a month later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found the crash site.
What is known
HAKUTO-R M1 is the landing module of the Japanese company ispace. At the end of April, he was supposed to land on the moon. The spacecraft half an hour before landing was at a height of 80 meters above the surface. However, it crashed due to lack of fuel.
The payload was lost along with the HAKUTO-R M1. The module was supposed to deliver to the moon a robot of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), a Rashid lunar rover and a battery from NGK Spark Plug Co.
NASA experts located the crash site using the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The orbiter took 10 pictures of the proposed landing site using narrow-angle cameras. The photos were published on May 23rd. On them you can see four large fragments and several minor changes in the surface.
ispace does not plan to give up and is already working on a new spacecraft. The second mission is scheduled for 2024 and the third one for 2025. The Japanese startup hopes that new modules will be able to make a soft landing on the surface of the moon.
Source: space
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