A lander built by Japanese company ispace crashed on the lunar surface while attempting to make the nation's first private moon landing earlier this month — and now we know why.
Today (June 24), ispace released a statement detailing just what went wrong with the lander, named Resilience. The company said the spacecraft's laser range finder, or LRF, experienced an anomaly that prevented Resilience from obtaining valid measurements of its distance from the lunar surface. This prevented the moon lander from decelerating at the proper rate, causing it to crash.
The Resilience moon lander made that "hard landing" on June 5 as it tried to touch down near the Mare Frigoris region of the moon's near side, also known as the "Sea of Cold." It was the second time ispace lost a lander while coming down onto the lunar surface; in April of 2023, the company lost its Hakuto-R lander in a similar way.
Source: www.space.com
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