CRASH SITE OF MOON LANDER CARRYING UAE’S RASHID ROVER REVEALED BY NASA
▶ Disappointment after the hard landing on April 25 is replaced by determination to make Rashid 2 a success
A Nasa spacecraft has taken images of the site on the Moon where the lander carrying the UAE’s Rashid rover crash-landed last month.
Photos show large pieces of debris scattered across the lunar surface.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took 10 images around the landing site at the Atlas Crater, where a privately built and operated lander that carried the rover failed in its attempted soft landing on April 25.
Mission control lost contact with the Hakuto-R lander, built by Japan’s ispace, moments before touchdown was meant to take place.
Nasa said it had used narrow angle cameras to take the photographs and had identified an unusual surface change near the landing site.
One image shows four large pieces of debris and several changes to the lunar surface. The orbiter identified another change on the lunar surface, which could be a small crater or different parts of the Japanese lander’s body.
If no craters were formed from the crash, it could mean that the landing was not as hard as thought, and it was closer to a soft touchdown.
“This site will be analysed more over the coming months, as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera has the opportunity to reimage the site under various lighting and viewing geometries,” Nasa said.
Ispace will hold a media briefing tomorrow to reveal details about why the mission failed.
But in an initial investigation carried out after the crash landing, the company had said the remaining propellant in the spacecraft decreased during the landing attempt and shortly afterwards the descent speed rapidly increased.
This could suggest that the spacecraft ran out of fuel during the attempted touchdown, causing the engines to shut down and the lander to crash on the Moon.
“After that, the communication loss happened. Based on this, it has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the Moon’s surface,” ispace officials said at the time.
The Rashid rover was meant to spend 14 Earth days on the lunar surface, capturing thousands of images and transmitting data to Earth.
It was the first mission under the UAEs long-term Moon exploration programme.
Emirati engineers at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre spent nearly five years building the vehicle. There was great disappointment at the space centre’s mission control in Dubai when ispace lost contact with the lander, but the engineers are already working on a second rover, called Rashid 2.
A team of 11 engineers at the space centre had been working on the Rashid rover since 2017, hoping that their efforts would allow the UAE to become the first Arab nation to place a spacecraft on the surface of another celestia body.
Although the Rashid rover did not make it safely to the lunar surface, Emirati engineers gained a wealth of data that can be used for future missions.
The reconnaissance orbiter sent by Nasa to inspect the landing area took 10 images showing a field of mechanical debris