Nasa discovers big crater on the Moon. It was made by crashed Japanese spacecraft
Weeks after the Japanese spacecraft Resilience crashed on the Moon, Nasa has captured images of the debris. The spacecraft crashed on the Moon as it attempted a soft landing in the northern hemisphere.Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured photos of the site where the ispace Mission 2 attempted to land. LRO's right Narrow Angle Camera, one in a suite of cameras known as LROC, captured the image from an altitude of about 50 miles above the surface of Mare Frigoris, a volcanic region interspersed with large-scale faults known as wrinkle ridges.advertisement
The dark smudge visible above the arrow in the photo formed as the vehicle impacted the surface, kicking up regolith — the rock and dust that make up Moon 'soil.' The faint bright halo encircling the site resulted from low-angle regolith particles scouring the delicate surface.Nasa is not the only agency to have captured the images. India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter also captured the images, however, Isro is yet to release them officially.Space enthusiast Shanmuga Subramanian found the debris in the images captured by Chandrayaan-2's Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC).The spacecraft was tagetting to land on the Moon's Sea of Cold in the Northern Hemisphere when Mission Control in Tokyo lost communications and telemetry with the spacecraft.Hours after the spacecraft crashed on the Moon, ispace revealed the initial findings from data it received moments before the spacecraft had a hard landing on the Moon.advertisementThe laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values. As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently.Chandrayaan-2's OHRC, with its impressive 0.25-meter resolution—the highest achieved by any lunar orbiter—provided the crucial data needed to pinpoint the crash site.Must Watch
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