Resilience Spacecraft Likely Crashed Into the Moon, Ispace Confirms (cnn.com) 30
Japan-based Ispace confirmed its Resilience lander likely crashed during its second failed attempt at a lunar landing, after a sensor malfunction prevented proper deceleration. Despite the setback, the company remains committed to future missions, with funding secured for a third attempt using a new lander, Apex 1.0, scheduled for 2027. "Until then, Ispace has its work cut out for it," reports CNN. "[Ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada] said during the news briefing he will need to work to regain the trust of investors, and the company will need to deeply investigate what went wrong on the Resilience mission to ensure similar issues don't plague Apex 1.0."
The company has ambitious "plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits," notes ABC News. "If ispace is going to establish a colony on the moon, it will need to identify an ample supply of ice or water, which it will convert into fuel for a future lunar fueling station. The ability to produce fuel on the moon will enable the company to transport people back and forth between the Earth and the moon."
The company has ambitious "plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits," notes ABC News. "If ispace is going to establish a colony on the moon, it will need to identify an ample supply of ice or water, which it will convert into fuel for a future lunar fueling station. The ability to produce fuel on the moon will enable the company to transport people back and forth between the Earth and the moon."
So... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. The naming probably follows the idea of the "Big Lie".
Re: So... (Score:2)
Starship is funded by Starlink, which is the same company.
Re: (Score:3)
...it was not very resilient, after all.
Well, "resilient" means bouncing back after failure. So... we'll see.
Bounce (Score:1)
Did the lander bounce on impact?
Re: So... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
They are "resealant" misspelled.
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The moon OTOH is resilient and also a harsh mistress.
Fail Often: Check (Score:2)
Tourism - Really ? (Score:1)
Come see the lunar desert, -273 degrees, total vacuum, as far away from home as you can get.
I guess its a niche for the super riche.
Maybe put up lots of drones and let tourists and privateers zip them around on remote to map the surface.
Re: Tourism - Really ? (Score:2)
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That's fair. I'd find it interesting too. Perhaps we are a little naive how hostile an environment space is. It's like nothing on earth. The desolate places here are relatively accessible in some cases just hours away. Moon ... nope. Altogether a different kind of desolate.
Re: Tourism - Really ? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Come see the lunar desert, -273 degrees, total vacuum, as far away from home as you can get.
I guess its a niche for the super riche.
Maybe put up lots of drones and let tourists and privateers zip them around on remote to map the surface.
Imagine the amusement park rides. Or visiting somewhere where you can jump several meters at a go with minimal effort. I mean, I wouldn't want to live there permanently, but I think the moon would be a fun visit, if there were any hope of making a visit affordable. Maybe there is, but I doubt it will be in the lifetime of most people reading this story.
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Imagine the amusement park rides
They're not that good. [youtube.com]
We're whalers on the moon
We carry a harpoon
But there ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing our whaling tune
Re: Tourism - Really ? (Score:2)
Come see the lunar desert, -273 degrees, total vacuum, as far away from home as you can get.
And then you look upâ¦
the lunar desert, -273 degrees, total vacuum (Score:2)
Just 0.15 Kelvin ?
I doubt its that cold.
Seems difficult (Score:2)
Re:Seems difficult (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more difficult to do near the poles, to be fair. Apollo landed nearer the equator because it needed to return to the Earth, and being near the equator gives you both less energy needed to get back into lunar orbit and less energy needed to leave lunar orbit. It also meant that in the event of a problem like with Apollo 13, they were on a free return trajectory.
Landing near the poles also makes shadows even bigger, so computer vision systems have to work harder. The south pole is the most difficult because of its inclination relative to the Earth, but the north pole isn't exactly easy either.
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The Apollo missions were manually piloted (with computer assistance). Computers may be good but "land a spacecraft on an unmapped lunar surface" is still a challenge. Also Apollo was intended to take off from the moon so had a lot of fuel on board, which gives more scope for modifying the landing trajectory and even aborting the landing.
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To land on the moon. I guess those guys in 1969 were just too good.
To be fair, if you look at the history starting with the Ranger missions [nasa.gov], success in getting to and landing on the moon came only after a series of failures.
Unsurprising (Score:2)
It took me a whack of tries in Luner Lander on that mainframe in '73 even with a simplified simulation. Working with a dumb terminal didn't help.
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It took me a whack of tries in Luner Lander on that mainframe in '73 even with a simplified simulation. Working with a dumb terminal didn't help.
Now imagine your latency is a second and that mainframe from 73’ is communicating with a 68000 processor running on hardware that’s never been field tested before. At least in lunar lander your controls and sensors don’t just go nuts for no reason.
laser rangefinder (Score:3)
The article says the altitude sensor acted up. Space is a harsh environment and launches can be rough, seems like you would want multiple redundancy in your sensor suite.
altitude sensor , multiple redundancy (Score:2)
Trouble is most other types of altimeters use air pressure. That doesn't work on the moon.
GPS satellites in LEO aren't a lot of help either.
Re: (Score:2)
>> most other types of altimeters use air pressure
Right, therefore the laser rangefinder. It seems like you would want more than one of those critical instruments, ideally not the same model just in case of a hidden design flaw, and they should closely agree on the altitude.
This shouldn't be difficult (Score:4, Funny)
It's not rocket science ... Oh wait.
(bu-dum-tching)
trashing the moon (Score:3)
We seen to be littering the moon with quite a bit of trash recently. I think we have a better record of landing on Venus than the moon right now, which is saying something!
I suspect it's a matter of cost and convenience. "it's closer and easier" seems to be leading to lower quality landers. No redundancy, simple things breaking, fragile designs, lax testing, no way to fix problems that come up, anything goes wrong and it's a complete mission fail.
We're launching so many landers lately that either totally fail or provide a pittance of science before dying. It's embarrassing. What are these, K-Mart blue light specials?
3 steps to success (Score:2)
1) land successfully without crashing
2) send a small nuclear reactor to the moon
3) profit from Moon-power