11 hours ago
Nasa spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander
This image provided by NASA shows an annotation indicating the impact site for ispace's Resilience lunar lander, seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (Picture credit: AP)
CAPE CANAVERAL
: A
Nasa
spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company's
lunar lander
.
Nasa released the pictures Friday, two weeks after
ispace
's lander slammed into the moon.
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into
Mare Frigoris
or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon's far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
Nasa's
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
captured the scene last week.
The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.