And here is the confirmation (because the time given is identical) that #HAKUTO-R M2 is to be launched together with #BlueGhost on the same #Falcon9 to the Moon: https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=6678 - the other mission is not mentioned at all, though, while NASA in turn hadn't mentioned HAKUTO-R in its launch date announcement ... how silly is this, please?

How #HAKUTO-R Mission 1 crashed onto the Moon because its software thought it was much lower than it really was: a slide from today's press conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owt2u9SJIbU, more in https://twitter.com/cosmos4u/status/1662177553300242441 and a detailled description of the findings in the press release https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=4691

Just in - an LROC image showing "at least four prominent pieces of debris [of the crashed #HAKUTO-R M1 lander] and several small changes" on the lunar surface: go to http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/posts/1302 for this image taken the day after being blinked against an earlier one.

Analysis of #HAKUTO-R Spacecraft Landing on the Moon, 2023-Apr-25 (from amateur radio observations): https://amsat-dl.org/en/analysis-of-hakuto-r-spacecraft-landing-on-the-moon-2023-apr-25/ -> "The ispace HAKUTO-R M1 spacecraft mission was planned to land on Earth’s Moon in or near Atlas crater at 2023-04-25 16:40 utc. But the HAKUTO-R M1 signal ceased abruptly at 16:45:09 utc, and it was immediately clear that the spacecraft had not landed as planned. The final 88s of doppler shift profile indicated free fall, followed by a destructive landing on the Moon"

#Reuters April 26, 2023 #Japan's #ispace #MoonLander #Hakuto "apparently went into a free-fall towards the surface as it was running out of #fuel to fire up its thrusters" https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/japans-ispace-prepares-worlds-first-commercial-lunar-landing-2023-04-25

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

RT @IanJohnBuckley (on Twiiter) re. the official explanation of the #HAKUTO loss vs. ham radio observations: "The doppler on the radio carrier tells a story of a free fall from greater than 10km, so it’s not what I’d call close, but they were very late wrt there predicted landing time so fuel exhaustion seems a solid bet."

Long time followers know what happens during spacecraft emergencies. The ground station(s) usually send recovery requests to the spacecraft for days following an incident. This case appears to be different, like the fate of #HAKUTO is known.

---
RT @coastal8049
Well folks, its 2am here almost, no signals from #VikramLander. I'll leave the system running and recording. Meanwhile DSN24 continues to transmit to Vikram.... Thanks to …
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1172795789061443584

According to the #HAKUTO-R M1 update https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=4655 "it has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the Moon’s surface" - after it had run out of fuel - and was destroyed. A lot of questions remain unanswered, though, and analysis of the received telemetry continues. Eventually a scenario must be found that also explains all the interesting effects on the radio carrier several radio hams have recorded in detail.

Comm. signal from HOKUTO-R was lost when the lander was 90 meters above the lunar surface.

The graphic below is a screen-shot from the webcast which was showing an animation of the landing based on real-time telemetry data.

#HAKUTO #ispace
10/n

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

#HAKUTO #ispace
10/n

The loss of signal as seen in Bochum with the 20-meter dish: #HAKUTO-R fell silent abruptly at 16:45:10 UTC, including sidebands which apparently carried telemetry. It's not clear at this point whether this marked an on-board failure after a soft landing, an impact (5 minutes after the planned touch-down time?) or another failure while the spacecraft flew on a bad trajectory. Sadly no technical discussion at all on the webcast - which had been pretty good for the first hour - before it ended.

The mission has essentially been declared a loss by a #HAKUTO-R manager in the webcast (which has been terminated), but they got telemetry til near touchdown (or impact) and have learned a lot for future attempts. Meanwhile in Bochum analysis of the received carrier - which then fell silent, for good - continues.