Pensava di essere ormai sulla superficie e invece era ancora a 5 km di altezza: a fare schiantare sulla #Luna il lander giapponese #HAKUTO-R è stato un malfunzionamento nel sistema che calcola l'altitudine https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=4691
Sad news about #HAKUTO, which has most likely failed to land on the moon. They were able to collect data during the approach, which is highly valuable, but (my understanding is) at the moment of landing it stopped transmitting.
Apparent loss of the Hakuto-R lunar lander, which would have been the first private vehicle to transmit from the moon. It's for sure it reached surface - but likely not in without rapid unscheduled disassembly. #hakuto
#NYT 📆 April 25, 2023, 12:50 p.m. ET It is now about 10 minutes after the touchdown time. #Ispace has cut to pre-recorded videos on its livestream. It only takes 1.3 seconds for a radio signal to travel from the moon to Earth. During the descent, the commentator mentioned that the signal from the lander had cut out. That is not necessarily catastrophic, but with the minutes that have since passed, it may be a sign that something went wrong https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/25/science/ispace-moon-landing-japan
I'm looking forward to the moon landing attempt tomorrow of the ispace HAKUTO-R craft carrying a Tomy selfie camerabot and a 4-wheeled rover. There are great photos already from the lander, presently in lunar orbit at 100km up. This Earthrise was taken this afternoon when the moon was causing an eclipse in Australia; if you look closely you can see the dark eclipse shadow on the Earth's image. :-D #space#ispace#hakuto-r #earthrise#eclipse#australia
HAKUTO-R Mission 1 – the first privately-led Japanese mission (by ispace Inc) is scheduled to land on the moon on Tuesday. The landing sequence will begin at ~15:40 UTC (10:40 EDT) on Tue, April 25, 2023.
The orbiter is currently in a 100 km circular orbit.
After landing, the lander will deploy the Rashid rover developed by the Emirates Lunar Mission.
Webcast starts at 11:00 a.m. EDT at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpR1UUnix3g
HAKUTO-R M1 was launched at on Dec 11, 2022 along with the NASA Lunar Flashlight mission. https://ispace-inc.com/m1
The spacecraft followed an energy-efficient trajectory similar to the CAPSTONE mission, traveling out 1.5m km from earth and then looping back to catch up with the moon.
The spacecraft was inserted into an elliptical 100-6000 km orbit around the moon on March 21, 2023 and circularized recently.
The UAE’s Rashid rover was developed at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC) in Dubai.
At 10 kg mass, it has twin hi-res cameras on its front mast, a microscopic camera, a thermal imaging camera and a Langmuir probe to sample the moon's plasma environment.
Rashid will operate for approx. one lunar day (14 Earth days) on the lunar surface. It is not expected to survive the lunar night.
Here is another beautiful perfectly-timed image taken recently by the HAKUTO-R Mission 1 spacecraft from its 100 km circular orbit.
We can see the moon's shadow on earth in this image taken during the solar eclipse last week.
Lander and rover will touchdown on the moon in less than 24 hours! https://twitter.com/ispace_inc/status/1650506233575604227 #HAKUTO#ispace#ESA#UAE
6/n
This is animation of HAKUTO-R's journey to the moon and what will happen tomorrow morning starting at 10:40 EDT, as the spacecraft attempts to land on the lunar surface inside Atlas crater.
Note that there is no orbiter as part of this mission.
Looks like the HAKUTO-R landing was unsuccessful ☹️
ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada - “We have not been able to confirm successful landing. We have to assume…that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface. Our engineers continue to investigate the situation.”
Reminds you of the failed attempt by the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-2 in 2019, where comm. was lost during the last few seconds of landing. The Israeli Beresheet lander failed as well in 2019.
Here is my simplistic annotated graphic from 2019 of what went wrong with Chandrayaan-2 when it was lost in a hard landing.
Subsequent analysis attributed the failure to software glitches and the fact that the lander thrusters were capable of throttling between 40 to 100% but only in steps of 20%. The step size was insufficient in reducing the velocity responsively and hence velocity during the second phase of descent was more than expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-2
From this update from ispace, it sounds like the HAKUTO-R lander ran out of fuel and could not slow down sufficiently before it met the moon. Bummer. https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=4655 #HAKUTO#ispace
11/n
The #HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander has successfully carried out its second orbital control maneuver in accordance with its mission operations plan: https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=4225
The #HAKUTO-R Mission 1 Lunar Lander has completed all planned orbital control maneuvers, completing Success 8 of the Mission 1 Milestones: https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=4611 - after a controlled burn from the lander’s main propulsion system lasting approximately 10 minutes, the maneuver was successfully completed on 13 April.