Japan’s ispace startup last month very nearly succeeded in becoming the first team to land a privately funded spacecraft on the moon.
Related Some of that data was used in its post-mission analysis, which investigated the precise cause of the crash landing. In a news release from ispace, the company said that an error occurred with the lander’s altitude measurement. The most likely reason for the lander’s erroneous altitude estimation, ispace said, was a software issue.
A complicating factor was the team’s decision to select a new landing site for Hakuto that it thought would be more interesting for scientists. Preparations for the new site failed to adequately take into account the lunar environment on the navigation route, resulting in the software misjudging the lander’s altitude on its final approach, ispace explained.