![]() ![]() What is more, the mission was insured (one of various ways in which it was the first of a kind), though whether the crash falls within the scope of the policy has not been announced. ![]() Managing to get to within a few kilometres of the Moon’s surface may sound like something of a pyrrhic victory, but it shows that most of the company’s engineering works. Quite why the spacecraft ran out of fuel a bit before the finish line is not clear. On the final journey from orbit to surface, though, its engine cut out a little too early and it plummeted to the surface. ![]() The spacecraft, launched last December, had performed nicely as it took a slow, energy efficient trajectory out to the Moon, inserted itself into orbit, and adjusted that orbit until it was circling at 100km just as intended. The latest pupils to walk out of one of her tests with only a new crater to show for it are the team at ispace, a Japanese company, which tried, and failed, to land HAKUTO-R Mission 1 on the edge of Mare Frigoris on April 25th. ![]()
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