The first commercial moon landing crashed due to fuel starvation

A Japanese lunar lander crashed on the Moon last month due to fuel starvation. This fuel was used to slow down the engines. Without “brake”, the craft crashed at an altitude of about 5 kilometers. That’s why he was lost. The developer of the lunar lander, the Japanese company ispace, reports this after research.

It was supposed to be the first commercial moon landing. Mission 1 of Project Hakuto-R was launched in December. In March, the craft entered orbit around the moon, at an altitude of about 100 kilometers. The landing began on April 26. It went well at first, says ispace, the craft descended and slowed down. At an altitude of 5 kilometers, the lander had a speed of almost 3.6 kilometers per hour when it went wrong.

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The fact that the lander ran out of fuel may be due to an error in the altimeter. During the descent, the lander flew over the edge of a crater. The software had ignored this and mistakenly assumed that a sensor used to measure height was faulty.

Crater

The ispace company says future flights to the moon will continue as usual. The software will be adjusted to prevent it from happening again.

A few days ago, the American space agency NASA shared photos of a small crater that would have been created by the crash of the Japanese lander.