A Laser -Navigation -Tool did the Moonlander of a Japanese company doomed earlier this month, which crashed in the moon.
Officials for ISPACE announced the news from Tokyo on Tuesday. The crash landing was the second for ISPACE in two years.
This time the lander of the company with the name Resilience sought the far north of the moon in mare Frigoris, or sea of cold. NASA’s Moon survey Orbiter passed photos of the crash site last week where resilience and the mini -robber were as a wreck.
Business officials blamed the accident to the lander’s laser range and said it was slow in operation and to properly measure the distance from the spacecraft to the moon surface. The resilience fell at a fast speed of 138 feet (42 meters) per second when the contact was lost and crashed five seconds later, they said.
Poor software ensured that the first moonlander of ISPACE hit the moon in 2023. Just like the last attempt, the problem took place during the final phase of the descent.
Of the seven Moon Landing attempts by private outfits in recent years, only one total success can claim: Firefly Aerospace’s Touchdown from his Blue Ghost Lander in March. Blue Ghost was launched with resilience in January and shared a SpaceX -Raketrit from Florida.
Apart from the Firefly established in Texas, only five countries have drawn a successful lunar landing: the Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan. And only the US put astronauts on the moon, back more than half a century ago during the NASA Apollo program.
Despite back-to-back losses, ISPACE Vooruit with its third moon landing attempt in 2027, with NASA cooperation, as well as a fourth planned mission. Extra tests and improvements will add no less than 1.5 billion yen (more than $ 10 million) to the development costs, officials said.
CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada emphasized that his company “has not been withdrawn into the light of setbacks” and wants to regain the confidence of customers. External experts will participate in the accident review and ISPACE will work more closely with the Japanese Space Agency for Technical Affairs.
“We are taking the next step in the direction of our future missions,” he said in Japanese.
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