Second ispace craft has probably crash-landed on Moon
日本 ispace 公司第二艘月球着陆器疑似坠毁
A Japanese spacecraft has probably crashed on the Moon, the second failed landing attempt for Tokyo-based private firm ispace.
日本一艘航天器很可能已在月球坠毁，这是东京私营企业 ispace 第二次登月失败尝试。
The HAKUTO-R Mission 2 (M2) lander — also called Resilience — began its landing sequence from a 100-kilometre-altitude orbit at 3.13am local time on 5 June. The craft was due to land near the centre of Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) at 4.17am.
当地时间 6 月 5 日凌晨 3 点 13 分，”白兔-R”2 号任务着陆器（又称”坚韧号”）从 100 公里高度的轨道开始着陆程序。该航天器原定于 4 点 17 分在冷海中心区域附近着陆。
The ispace team said at a press conference that it lost contact with M2 when the craft was 192 metres above the Moon’s surface and descending faster than expected. An attempt to reboot M2 was also unsuccessful.
ispace 团队在新闻发布会上表示，当着陆器距月表 192 米并以超出预期的速度下降时失去了联系。重启着陆器的尝试也未获成功。
M2 didn’t receive measurements of the distance between itself and the lunar surface in time to slow down and reach its correct landing speed, the team said.
团队称，2 号任务着陆器未能及时接收月面距离测量数据，导致无法减速至正确着陆速度。
“It eventually slowed down, but not softly enough,” says Clive Neal, who studies the Moon at the University of Notre Dame in Indianapolis, US. He speculates that the failure was probably caused by a systems issue that wasn’t identified and addressed during the M1 landing attempt. “It’s something that I believe will definitely be fixable, because getting that close means there’s a few tweaks that are going to be needed for the next one,” he adds.
“最终确实减速了，但缓冲力度不足，”美国印第安纳州圣母大学月球研究专家克莱夫·尼尔分析道。他推测故障可能源于系统问题，而该问题在首次任务着陆尝试中未被发现和解决。”我认为这绝对可以修复，因为能如此接近月表意味着下次只需进行一些微调，”他补充道。
If M2 had successfully landed on the lunar surface, the mission would have been the second time a commercial company had achieved the feat and a first for a non-US company. ispace’s Mission 1 (M1) probably crashed during a landing attempt in April 2023.
如果 M2 成功着陆月球表面，这将是商业公司第二次实现这一壮举，也是非美国公司的首次突破。ispace 的第一次任务（M1）在 2023 年 4 月的着陆尝试中可能坠毁。
Second chance 第二次机会
Lunar landings are challenging. When M1 crashed, Ryo Ujiie, ispace’s chief technology officer said the telemetry — which collects data on the craft’s altitude and speed — estimated that M1 was on the surface when it wasn’t, causing the lander to free fall.
月球着陆充满挑战。当 M1 坠毁时，ispace 首席技术官 Ryo Ujiie 表示，遥测数据（用于收集飞行器高度和速度信息）误判 M1 已到达表面，导致着陆器自由坠落。
Speaking to Nature last week, Ujiie said the company had addressed the telemetry issue with M2 and modified its software. “We also carefully selected how to approach the landing site,” he added.
Ujiie 上周向《自然》杂志透露，公司已针对 M2 解决了遥测问题并改进了软件。”我们还精心规划了接近着陆点的方式，”他补充道。
Had M2 landed successfully, the craft would have supplied electricity for its cargo, including water electrolyzing equipment and a module for food production experiments — developed by Japan-based Takasago Thermal Engineering and biotechnology firm Euglena. A deep space radiation probe made by Taiwan’s National Central University, and the 54-centimetre Tenacious rover were also be on board. The rover, created by ispace’s European subsidiary in Luxemburg, was going to be released from the lander to collect imagery, location data and lunar sand known as regolith. Tenacious also carries a small red house made by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
若 M2 成功着陆，该航天器将为搭载的货物提供电力支持，包括由日本高砂热力工程公司和生物技术企业优格莱纳开发的水电解设备与食品生产实验模块。台湾中央大学研制的深空辐射探测仪以及 54 厘米高的”坚韧号”月球车也同船抵达。这辆由 ispace 卢森堡欧洲子公司制造的月球车计划从着陆器释放，负责采集图像、定位数据以及被称为月壤的月球沙土样本。”坚韧号”还携带了瑞典艺术家米凯尔·根伯格制作的一个红色小房子模型。
Commercial pair 商业双子星
The craft launched on 15 January from Cape Canaveral, Florida, onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket was also carrying the Blue Ghost Moon lander — developed by Firefly Aerospace, an aerospace firm based in Texas — which landed on the Moon on 2 March.
该航天器于 1 月 15 日搭乘 SpaceX 猎鹰 9 号火箭从佛罗里达州卡纳维拉尔角发射升空。同枚火箭还搭载了得克萨斯州航天企业萤火虫航空航天公司研制的”蓝色幽灵”月球着陆器——后者已于 3 月 2 日成功登月。
M2 took a longer path to the moon than Blue Ghost, performing a lunar flyby on 15 February and spending two months in a low-energy transfer orbit before entering lunar orbit on 7 May. Ujiie says the path was slower because it was a low-energy trajectory, meaning that less fuel was used to move between Earth and lunar orbit.
M2 月球探测器采用了比”蓝幽灵”更长的飞行路径，它在 2 月 15 日进行月球飞越后，经过两个月的低能量转移轨道飞行，最终于 5 月 7 日进入环月轨道。Ujiie 表示这条路径耗时更长是因为采用了低能量轨道，意味着在地球与月球轨道间转移时消耗的燃料更少。
Richard de Grijs, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says there will likely be more private companies trying to land their own crafts on the Moon. “It seems that the big government players like NASA are quite keen to partner with commercial companies,” he says, because they can develop and launch crafts more cheaply than government bodies. He also expects that more missions will be launched in clusters, like the launch of M2 and Blue Ghost.
澳大利亚悉尼麦考瑞大学的天文学家 Richard de Grijs 指出，未来可能会有更多私营企业尝试实现月球着陆。”像 NASA 这样的政府机构似乎非常热衷于与商业公司合作，”他表示，因为私营企业能以比政府机构更低的成本开发和发射航天器。他还预计未来会出现更多像 M2 和”蓝幽灵”这样的集群发射任务。