This image provided by NASA shows an annotation indicating the impact site for ispace’s Resilience lunar lander, seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (Picture credit: AP) CAPE CANAVERAL: A Nasa spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander. Nasa released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace‘s…
This image provided by ispace, inc. shows the Resilience lander circling the moon (AP photo) A Japanese private lunar lander lost communication during its descent to the moon on Friday, leaving its fate unclear. Tokyo-based ispace confirmed that the lander, named Resilience, successfully departed lunar orbit, but contact was lost during the hour-long descent phase.The…
JAPAN: A private lunar lander from Japan is closing in on the moon, aiming for a touchdown in the unexplored far north with a mini rover. The moon landing attempt by Tokyo-based company ispace on Friday Japan time is the latest entry in the rapidly expanding commercial lunar rush. The encore comes two years after…
NASA made a bet a few years ago that commercial companies could take scientific experiments to the moon on a lower budget than the agency could. Last year, that was a bad bet. The first NASA-financed spacecraft missed the moon entirely. The second landed but fell over. But this month, a robotic lander named Blue…
A day after landing on the moon, the robotic Athena spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines of Houston is dead. In an update on its website on Friday, the company confirmed that Athena had tipped onto its side — the same fate that befell its first lunar lander, Odysseus, last year. With its solar panels unable…
Athena didn’t crash. But what did happen to it? Hours after the 15-foot-tall robotic spacecraft arrived at the moon’s surface, closer to the lunar south pole than any spacecraft has been, it remained unclear whether its touchdown was smooth enough to perform its intended work, or if it toppled over in the process, potentially limiting…