A NASA spacecraft orbiting the moon has captured images of the crash site where a Japanese company’s lunar lander went down.
NASA released the photos on Friday, two weeks after the lander, developed by Tokyo-based ispace, crashed onto the lunar surface.
The images, taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter last week, reveal a dark mark at the impact site in Mare Frigoris, also known as the Sea of Cold—a volcanic plain in the moon’s northern region. A faint halo around the site indicates lunar soil disturbed by the crash of the lander, named Resilience, along with its small rover.
This marks ispace’s second lunar landing failure in as many years. The company launched the mission from Cape Canaveral in January and plans to hold a news conference next week to discuss what went wrong.
