June 12, 2025 • 35 mins
On this episode, we discuss the second attempt by the Japanese company iSpace to land their Hakuto-R rover on the moon. The lander was lost on descent and no communication followed. What happened? What was the root cause of the failure? Why is the moon so hard to land on?
This week we touch on the broader spectrum of space exploration, including the improbable but successful Apollo 11 mission and the challenges for the current push for lunar missions by various nations and private companies.
We'd love to know YOUR thoughts - so make sure to reach out to us on social or email us at todayinspacepodcast@gmail.com
Here's to building a fantastic future - and continued progress in Space (and humanity)!
Spread Love, Spread Science
Alex G. Orphanos
Timestamps:
00:00 Ispace Moon Landing Attempt and Initial Findings
02:02 Challenges, Technical Issues, and Range Finder Problems
13:35 Comparison with Apollo 11 and Current Lunar Missions
20:32 Ispace's Future Plans and the Importance of Learning
20:47 Best-of Live Broadcast and Community Hangout
35:11 Final Thoughts and Future Plans
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#spacemoonlanding #resilience #moonlander #laserrangefinder #lunarsurface #spaceexploration #microrover #spaceindustry #moonlanding #spacetechnology #apollo11 #NASA #ESA #JAXA
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome to Today InSpace. I'm gonna start this
(00:03):
episode talking about whathappened with the ispace moon
landing that was supposed tooccur last week, and we'll say
what the team found and ourthoughts about it. I know
there's been a lot of like, bigthemes of questions that have
been asked around this that I'mgonna try to touch on and then
at the end of the episode, foranyone who wasn't available to
(00:24):
join us live for the landingHangout, we're gonna have clips
from that. So some of the bestquestions, some of the some of
the moments that just kind oflike happen naturally, but if
you're interested in likegetting to learn more about
space, or having someone thereto ask questions that's not AI
or something like that. That'swhat we're doing on those live
hangouts. So make sure to followus online, Today In Space pod on
(00:47):
Instagram and on x, and then atToday In Space on Tiktok and
Today In Space podcast onFacebook. And that's a great
place if you just want to askquestions about space and learn
a little bit more, join acommunity of people that are
watching this all live. So gocheck out those lives. Follow us
online, because that's wherewe're going to be doing those
live, including our YouTubechannel. Of course, if you want
(01:07):
to ask a question anytime, oryou're a little shy and you
don't want to jump into the chator anything live, we've got an
email todayspacepodcast@gmail.com we can ask
your question anytime or ask fortopics that you'd like us to
cover here on the show. So Ispace m2 this is the second
attempt by the Japanese companyI space it's a publicly traded
(01:28):
company in Japan. It was a veryinteresting mission, obviously,
tonally, right? Because Ibelieve it was just Luxembourg
was creating the tenaciousrover, right? This micro rover
that was going to be on boardand had a camera on a mini
shovel, and if it had landedsuccessfully, would have gotten
HD views of this micro rovertraveling on the moon. And there
(01:49):
was the resilience lander, whichis the second hakuso R lander.
But we ended up finding out fromthis was that the moon is as
hard as it's been for everyone,regardless of your country of
origin, of the diversity of thepeople that you have in your
business or company, or in thecase of countries, you know,
(02:10):
governments, right? Governmentprograms like China's and NASA
and Jackson and Roscosmos forRussia, like there's in the ESA,
the European Space Agency, whichhad technology, among others on
this mission, going and landingon the moon is not easy, and
that's exactly what we foundout. The actual live broadcast
(02:31):
ended early without any kind ofdecision. So the status update,
the lander descended from analtitude of approximately 100
kilometers to approximately 20kilometers, and then
successfully fired its mainengine as planned to begin
deceleration, while the lander'sattitude was confirmed to be
nearly vertical, telemetry waslost thereafter, and no data
indicating a successful landingwas received. Even after the
(02:53):
scandal scheduled. Scandalschedule, scheduled landing time
had passed, and as they sayhere, based on the currently
available data, the MissionControl Center has been able to
confirm the following the laserrange finder used to measure the
distance to the lunar surfaceexperienced delays in obtaining
valid measurement values. As aresult, the lander was unable to
(03:14):
decelerate sufficiently to reachthe required speed for the
planned lunar landing. Based onthese circumstances, it is
currently assumed that thelander likely performed a hard
landing on the lunar surface,and so that's almost similar to
what happened to them on thefirst try. And quite honestly,
what seems to be happening tomost people that try and attempt
(03:37):
to land on the moon. The samething happened to Israel and
that they landed too fast andtoo hard. It happened on the
initial hago to our mission forI space right? And one that
landing ran out of fuel, and sothey weren't able to slow down
this time for them, they did nothave the right altitude with
that laser range finder. It tooktoo long to communicate with the
(03:59):
system to confirm the altitude,and it was going, I believe it
was 50 to 60 meters per second,which is extremely fast. And so
even a second or two leaves youwhere you have to slow down and
decelerate. Well, you can't doit fast enough. And so the
question is, is this a rangefinder problem? Right? Was the
range finder they used, notactually able to do what it
(04:21):
needed to do in space, in the inthe environment of space, but
maybe in testing it did allalong. You know, the moon
surface is highly reflective, soit makes you wonder about the
ability of a laser range finder.You know, how many times has
that laser range finder beentested in space? And I know, I
know I'm sounding like myprofessors that I was always at
(04:42):
odds with in school about flyingonly, flight Heritage Hardware.
Flight heritage being somethingthat's flown in space before,
right as a record of workingthat is a real thing in the
space industry. And while Ithink when I was in school, in
the this is in the end of the.Space shuttle era, when I was in
school for that, it was almostlike a an orthodoxy of thought,
(05:06):
right? It was like, you can'tfly anything unless it has a
very long list of flightheritage, which really limited
what you could send up to space.And companies like SpaceX and
others like Rocket Lab have haveshown that you can fly new
hardware and test new hardwarequickly and show that it
actually does work in space ormaybe it doesn't. And then you
(05:26):
can move on and try the nexthardware design, you know? And
here we are with a company withJapan, where they're trying to
do it for the first time, right?They don't have necessarily,
like the clips program for NASA,where NASA is sharing knowledge
with people like Firefly andintuitive machines. So people
that have the knowledge aboutwhat it takes to land on the
(05:47):
moon and critique and progressof you need to show this before
we're able to put this on to aspacecraft. Japan's never done
this before, and it's not likeNASA was just giving that help
freely, or would have been aservice that that company would
have had to pay for. And that'snot saying they can't that I
space, or any country that'strying this for the first time
can't land on the moon, but itshows how difficult it really,
(06:11):
really is. And a few otherthoughts about this that I want
to share before we go into thelive recap of the broadcast,
which was a lot of fun, really,if you haven't checked out our
our live streams and hung outwhile we do them. I know they're
random, because stuff that goeson in space is sometimes very
random the time of day andcompletely depends on where it
is in space or if the range hasgood enough weather to launch a
(06:35):
rocket at the space right. Sothat all aside, you should
definitely, definitely check itout anytime we are live. But one
thing that we found out from thepost landing broadcast was that
apparently, from Moon Landingattempt one in 2022 for ispace,
they did not change anythingother than software for the next
(06:56):
mission. And so the firstmission, one for ispace, again,
ran out of fuel, so they had toadjust how they were using fuel,
when they would use fuel. AndI'm sure there's plenty more
that I haven't even touched on,but that was the answer we were
given from the leadership, thetechnical leadership of ispace.
And so when you have somethinglike the rangefinder failing to
communicate fast enough with thesystem to fire the engines to
(07:21):
decelerate properly, which meansyou're going to splat on the
ground because it's too late,right? You had your shot. You
missed it. It's a really, reallyinteresting scenario that a lot
of engineers will run into. Thisis why I think I'm stuck on this
and fascinated by it, but onlyhaving done a software update
from Mission one to mission two,it shows you that they're in a
(07:44):
really tough spot, because thecompany's plan for missions
three and four were to move tothe larger Apex lander, and if
they have struggled to slow downthe spacecraft ultimately right
the application of them landingOn the moon, they got everything
right up to needing to do thatlast burn, to decelerate
(08:05):
properly on the second one, onthe first one, they they still
failed to decelerate properly,but they ran out of fuel. So if
you're using a bigger lander,you have more momentum, which
means you're going to need areally good understanding of how
you're going to slow thatspacecraft down, right? You've
got this big thing that needsmore energy to get to the moon.
(08:26):
And the way that they did theirorbit, you know, Firefly that is
the only one to successfullyland on the moon, country or
company since India's landing afew years ago. Firefly is the
only one that's done it. Andthey flew on the same SpaceX
rocket as I space did, and Ispace took five months to orbit,
(08:50):
to get to the moon, and that wasa good strategy, because it was
a lower energy way of getting tothe moon, to lunar orbit. You
know when in Apollo 11, whichwe'll talk about in a second
here, that was a very highenergy transfer, right? They
were going extremely fast, andthey had to do some serious
decelerations to actually get tothe point where they could then
(09:12):
softly touch down on the moon.And I space had the advantage of
taking a longer time to getthere, which meant they didn't
have to shed off as muchmomentum and speed and
acceleration. But if you'regoing to a bigger lander, and
it's on hardware you haven'ttested yet, you have this big
unknown of What didn't we getright about this on a smaller
(09:34):
lander that we had two tries atand we didn't make any hardware
changes,
what are they going to be doingto ensure and double down and
triple down on the mistakes thatthey know about, and be diligent
and disciplined enough to workaround mistakes or things that
they're not even aware are aproblem yet, or that they you
(09:57):
know, one thing you could dothat's an awesome. Option. I
don't know if it's the company'soption, but an option you could
do is go one more mission, applyeverything you learned from
mission to to build on what youdid, right? Because they did do
a lot of other things, right,right? The the rest of the orbit
going to the moon before thatlanding period was done well,
(10:20):
and they had issues with it thelast time. So the question is,
why wouldn't you just go doinganother one of these landers to
prove out that you've actuallyfigured it out, and then move on
to the next one? And I think thereality of being a private
company doing this space game,and not only in the private
sector, but a public company, apublicly traded company, right?
(10:43):
They have stock price to worryabout. Well, as an engineer, I
would rather figure out what weneeded to learn what we got
wrong, and then fix it beforemoving on to the bigger lander.
They may not have that luxury.And I'm sure you know, the the
three individuals that were onthe post moon landing, they they
(11:06):
were barraged by some veryserious questioning, and it was
not a very great day for the ispace team, as far as
leadership, having to deal withthe repercussions of failing a
second time, and almost worse,not having the answer to know if
they really did fail, eventhough the data points to most
(11:29):
likely they did. And one of thethings that was asked of me
during the broadcast was like,how did they figure out whether
it landed? Because that dataneeds to be beamed from the
lander back to Earth. And so ifthe lander loses communication
and then it lands or crashes,there's no more data to come
back. And so they really do haveto be like a detective, piecing
(11:52):
together what they know. Andhere in the data they did get
back, they did notice that thatrange finder just did not
respond fast enough, it probablydidn't get a good reading. That
would be my guess, but again,it's just a guess, and it's
going to take people who arevery knowledgeable about those
systems and those readings toparse through it and determine
(12:12):
it, and then they're still onlymaking their best guess. And so
moving into this larger lander,while small incremental
movements like it has more moremass and so more momentum. So
it's a little bit more stablewith each thruster that's fired.
It's also going to require morefuel for every move. So it's not
(12:34):
a great place that they're in,and it's, it's unclear if the
smaller lander that they sent upis was affected by the launch,
that a more sturdy, strongerlander is going to help the
issues that they did have. Sothey're really going to be
shooting in the dark and kind oftaking another gamble at the
(12:56):
next steps. And I'm sure there'ssome things that transfer over,
but ultimately they're movingwith a bigger, new lander, and
ispace plans to do both of thoselaunches in the same year, and
that will be very interesting. Ibelieve it was 2027, so the
ispace team will be working nonstop. It seems we may get an
(13:18):
orbital picture we did last timewith I spaces, first landing, we
got an image from orbit beforeand after, so you could see the
impact. But we, you know, we'll,we'll wait to see that.
Unfortunately, the moon takesanother, another victim in going
to the moon and trying to land.And that brings me to my last
point, which is that I think oneof the most impactful questions,
(13:42):
and good questions that I thinkpeople are asking around this
mission is, how did the Apollo11 moon landing the late 60s?
How did they land that with thattechnology, and yet, with all of
this technology that we havetoday and money and resources
that we can put behind going tothe moon? Why is nobody, aside
(14:04):
from Firefly, why is nobody ableto land on the moon? And I think
it's a great question, and Ithink there's an environmental
factor, right? NASA of theApollo program was a defense
level budget, right? So theamount of money that they had
for the space program wasastronomical, and they were
(14:27):
fighting a global arms race ofgetting to the moon right
against the Russians. And sothere's a different motivation
and a different cohesiveness ofthat group in that task, and I'm
not that doesn't put down Ispace, or anyone else that's
attempting this. Now, it's notsaying that they can't have
(14:47):
something that is equally asgood or as able to provide a
successful mission to the moon,but there was a there was a
different attitude back then,and the people that were doing
math back then. And were able todouble check and triple check in
us at a speed in their own head,the math that was happening
because they could not rely onthe computer. So there was a
(15:09):
different level of buy in,instead of kind of the position
that mission control is in inthis robotic scenario where
you're not reacting live to thefeedback of the spacecraft, like
the Apollo 11 astronauts were.These were the the right stuff
astronauts, right? These werethe test pilots who were
(15:31):
arguably the best of the best,and they were able to adjust
like even the Apollo 11 landingalmost didn't happen correctly,
right? It was, but it was, butit was because of the humans on
board. And that was a hugedriving force between the US
approach and Russia's approach.Russia's approach was, or the
USSR approach was autonomous,let the machine do everything,
(15:54):
and the human is there for theride, right there, the monkey,
if you will, and the US was thatno the human intelligence and
our pilots, they're going toknow what to do. And it that did
play out, and that's one hugefactor that this robotic mission
had to contend with. And whensomething hardware wise, like
(16:15):
the rangefinder was taking toolong to respond, once they
missed that window, it was overwhere an astronaut could have
overridden certain factors,reacted in a certain way, done
something that was not pre,written out in code in order to
make the landing successful. Andthen on top of it, just the
(16:36):
level of survival instinct thatwas in play there that just
isn't there in a robotic sense,and in one day it'll get there,
right? The reason why we haveairline travel like we do in
today's world is because of thatlevel of automation and and
we've done it enough times thatwe know most of the scenarios
that will happen. And so why wasApollo 11 that much like, why is
(17:02):
the Apollo 11 Moon Landing somuch more impressive? Because
they did it even against all theodds. And now we're seeing, we
finally have enough peopletrying to land on the moon that
we're seeing just how hard itis. And as I was saying in the
live broadcast, and I've beentrying to get this point across,
the moon is like untouched land.It's a frontier that humans,
(17:27):
aside from one location, uh, anarea
we haven't been there's therearen't that many satellites
there. There isn't GPS, therearen't roads, everything there
is untouched by humanity for themost part. And many of the
things that we rely on intoday's world, the amazing tech
(17:49):
that we do have, we rely on thattremendously. And so going to a
place that does not have thosethings requires a discipline and
a knowledge of, how do younavigate space? How do you how
do you travel land? How do youmake sure that there are
redundancies on board that ifthat laser range finder doesn't
(18:09):
work, we can still figure it outin the time that we need to
figure it out. So the reasonApollo 11 was successful was
because of the trained humansand all of the people, the
hundreds, 1000s of people thatwere behind the Apollo program
that helped make that possible,filling, filling in all the gaps
and and trying to attack theproblem from every area to make
(18:31):
sure that these human beings hadthe best chance of landing.
That's very even with all ofthose resources. It's extremely
difficult to do, and in the caseof governments, India is the
only other country that's beenable to do that in recent
memory, even though China hasdone this as well. So it's not
(18:51):
that it's impossible, but it'seither going to take you a lot
of chances, or you need to getreally lucky at figuring out a
way to get to the moon, thenrepeat that, and then you can
work outside the box. Andunfortunately, the position that
I space is in is they need tostill find that routine path of
(19:14):
getting there and doing it witha new lander. So again, we wish
I space all the luck. Iappreciated all the questions
and everyone reaching out aboutthis. It got kind of
underwritten. The failure gotkind of underneath the wake of
the whole Elon Trump scenario.So we have not talked about
that, because even if we wantedto, it would change two days
(19:38):
later. So if you guys want us tocover that. You can let me know.
But otherwise, we're going towait until it all rolls out and
we're going to find out moreabout who's going to be the next
leader of NASA, because they nowneed a new administrator, now
that Jared Isaac mins thing hasbeen taken away his nomination.
(19:58):
So again, lots. Craziness, a 25%budget cut for NASA on the
voting block. There's a lot ofthings happening right now. We
will do a review once the dusthas settled on all of this,
because we did have a Jaredisaacman Episode lined up that
is now not gonna be relevantanymore, so we'll take the the
(20:21):
beatings we've gotten so far,and we'll keep pushing forward,
adapting to everything thathappens and just making the most
of it, folks. So thank you forjoining us for Today In Space as
always. Please make sure tosubscribe wherever you are on
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(20:44):
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email for new topics, questions,Today In Space podcast@gmail.com
(21:08):
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(21:51):
joining us, and we'll close outthis episode with the best clips
from the live broadcast fromlast week. Thanks for joining
us. Have a good week. See younext time. Hello. Hello
everybody. Welcome. We are herefor landing Hangouts, not a
launching out the landinghangout the Japanese company
(22:14):
ispace, second attempt atlanding on the moon. We have the
broadcast in the background andthe original broadcast is in
Japanese. So the one we'relistening to is off YouTube, and
this is the English version. Soyou're going to hear someone
else translating everything,but, um Yeah, we're here to hang
out. 317 is roughly Easterntime, so about 45 minutes from
(22:38):
now is when landing is so we'rehere. We're hanging out. Say hi
in the chat. This is your firsttime. Let us know. Thanks for
joining. All right, so a lot ofgood stuff shared there. I did
want to touch on some of it,because I think it's, I think
it's really important todiscuss, so the chat is open if
(23:01):
you have any questions. But whatI want to do, let's talk a
little bit about that. So a lotof people will ask, you know, I
remember when I started Today InSpace podcast. This was 10 years
ago, and back then, the shuttlehad just retired. SpaceX was not
launching rockets like all thetime, so it was a very different
era. And when the Space Shuttlewas retired. People thought
(23:21):
that, you know, we stopped goingto space, you know, because we
stopped sending humans onAmerican rockets. Now that's a
very American thing to think,but it had been happening this
whole time, right? The US waspaying Russia per seat to send
astronauts up to theInternational Space Station,
which has had multiple decadesof continuous human traveling on
(23:45):
board, but like that's wherewe've spent a lot of the
resources on space. It's been inorbit around Earth. We haven't
gone back to the moon since theApollo era ended. So this is a
brand new time where NASAshooting for the moon, Artemis
one orbited the Moonrobotically, and Artemis two is
planned to launch. A lot of thatplan is still in flux. Artemis
(24:09):
three should be using thestarship from SpaceX, because
they were awarded the humanlanding contract to go to the
moon. And then all thesecompanies have been invested
Japan, having a company bringingthemselves to the moon, NASA,
funding different companies,especially American companies
like machines and Firefly, whichwas successful landing on the
(24:32):
moon not that long ago. Sothere's this push to go back to
the moon, but the moon is like afrontier, right? It is not
something that that we have goneto very far. We don't have GPS
everywhere. We don't know whatall the surfaces are like. We've
(24:52):
seen footage, but we don't havea good idea of everything on the
moon. So it's like traveling tothe Americas for. The first
time. So a lot of these missionsare about sending equipment that
helps us understand the moon.And I space is one of the
companies building the landers,and in this case, the micro
rover that's gonna have a cameraif they land successfully, which
(25:15):
is gonna be really cool. Butthese are the companies that are
allowing the like lunar economy,whatever that is to exist, but
there's demand to go to the moonand to understand it better. And
China's going. Russia doesn'thave many plans, but I would
wager that they're probablygoing to get more involved like
(25:37):
they used to. And the USobviously has NASA investing in
companies doing this right? Sothere is a huge push that's been
a long time coming back to themoon, and this is one of those
missions that could be veryhistoric. So just say hi. Let's
learn more about the landingphases here in
(25:57):
the spacecraft, the team willsend a command to initiate the
automatic descent sequence.Throughout this time, the
spacecraft will slowly getcloser to the surface of the
Moon while reducing its speeduntil finally it's close enough
and slow enough to gently touchon the surface of the moon. At
that time, the team will regaincontrol and will start the
preparations for the surfaceoperation phase. So just before
(26:19):
we start the landing phase. Weare about 100 kilometers above
the surface of the moon. Andthen we start our first phase of
the landing, which is the Dorbit in session. This is a very
short fire from the lander,which basically tries to bring
us closer to the surface of themoon. We come to a very
important phase, to 25kilometers to the moon. And once
that finishes, we start thesecond phase of landing, which
(26:42):
we call the course descendingphase. In this phase, the lander
is basically just coastingaround and trying to get closer
and closer to the moon'ssurface. And then right about
when we are closest to the moon,which is around 18 kilometers.
All
right, some of the bestsimulations I've seen of the
loop of the lunar landing, itshows how fast everything is
(27:03):
actually moving.
And we were going very fast, sowe fired all of our thrusters.
We burn very furiously, and thenwe try to reduce it as much as
we can. And after certain amountof time, we reach the fourth
phase, which is the breakingburn, slash, pitch, drop phase.
So we were horizontal. This iswhere the money is made.
Approach our landing site, andthen we reach the fifth phase of
(27:25):
our landing, which is theterminal decent phase. At this
time, our lander is almostvertical. We have reduced almost
all of the horizontal velocity,and now we're loving the
simulation. View our landingsite after above just 20 meters
or 10 meters above the surface,we reach the sixth phase, which
is the terminal landing. At thispoint, we cut off our main
engines and we are only landingslowly with the assist thrusters
(27:49):
and trying to land as softly aswe can on our landing site. And
once that finishes, we are atthe moon. So cool,
it's difficult to be a sciencecommunicator, who do Space
Science Podcast, right? So Iwould consider myself a science
communicator. It's really notthat easy to get videos that
(28:12):
portray reality well, that a lotof them are like marketing, like
videos right where they lookreally cool, but they're not
really telling you it's like aspace movie for the most part.
There's a few that do it reallywell, but they're showing you
things that are like, notactually how things work. And
that video showing the relativespeed of the spacecraft. You
know, if your perspective is,I'm on the spacecraft, the
(28:35):
speeds of the lunar surfacemoving underneath spot on, I
space. That was killer. I lovethat. ETA for landing with a
brick. Yes, it does seem like amini country effort, Europe,
Japan. And then there's a bunchof payloads that are on board
(28:57):
from commercial customers. I canpull that list up, but 317, so
about 20 minutes from now, we'vebeen lucky. In the last 510,
years, have multiple countriesattempt landing on the moon.
There's China, India, Israel,the US, and then and companies,
(29:20):
and I may be missing one. Idon't know if Russia has tried
to land something in a while,but in history, right? That it's
not a long list that has doneit, and a good portion of those
that launched and tried to landon the moon have failed. And
it's not easy, and
let's celebrate. You know whenwe hear the official
announcement. So this is goingto be, let's go very quiet
(29:44):
moment in a waiting for thevery, very special moment. Well,
you see this altitude is onlyfive kilometer, and the speed is
much less. We're going real
slow. It's just good. It's justwhat you need for soft landing.
You know,
(30:04):
500 kilometer per hour is, yeah,the deceleration has been a very
rapidly happening. It's lessthan a full kilometer. All the
thrusters are working perfectly,is how I see on the screen. So
now it's less than a 400kilometer per hour, and it's
(30:28):
only three kilometers inaltitude. This is a bullet train
kind of speed, so you canprobably not imagine what it's
like. This is everything isn'tworking out
great, all right, under aminute. I mean, a minute, 23
seconds, and it's estimated,because the way they know is
(30:52):
that the lander communicatesback to them. So if we don't
hear anything, it didn't makeit, but there's still going to
be a lag on when we hear soabout a minute. So
it's less than a minute untilthe scheduled landing time.
(31:14):
The animation is not caught upyet. See again, we just have to
wait until it's landed
less than a minute away.
Very, very for joining us.Welcome here for them.
Everyone's
(31:34):
super concentrated. The
Moon landing here, eye space.We're waiting for the lander to
touch down and sendcommunication back to Earth. We
need
to check that telemetry.
So what makes landing so nervewracking?
(31:58):
This is, you know, the where weneed to be patient and to wait
for just a while, three
years of long, hard, difficult,complex, complicated work, to
wait for communications
from the lander. It can't takesome more time.
(32:21):
So movement in the room. Notsure what to make of that. Maybe
a bunch of people that just needto unwind while they wait
before sharing the status topeople in the venue and those
who are watching online.
(32:41):
Now they're trying to see whatthey can see, probably comparing
against what they expected. Whoknows if they're getting
anything, but it looks likewe've got a little bit of
activity over here.
Had you waiting, but we couldactually play some video, which
(33:02):
we couldn't do before because ofthis. You know, the timing has
come, so be great, and if youcan wait and while watching
these videos, but I will. So
this looks, this looks more likea team of engineers trying to
come up with with answers, notnecessarily for a problem, but
what will they do next? Got noaudio here, but this looks like
(33:27):
the inside of the lander. Thequestion is, what happened? Did
it land successfully andsomething didn't deploy that
they need? Like maybe the powerdidn't start? Did or maybe they
lost power, and it's not thesun. The solar panels aren't
generating enough power. Coulddust have been a culprit here?
(33:49):
Are they only getting partialdata and not the whole thing?
You know, there could bemultiple lines of data they're
looking for and they're onlygetting maybe, you know, like a
heartbeat, but no telemetry orno power readings, that type of
thing. But really cool view.Here's really cool views here.
(34:11):
That's the tenacious roverthere, micro rover that's on
board. They're successful. We'llsee that roll out onto the
surface and 14 days of hopefullyan HD camera and a little rover
with a shovel. But for those arejust joining we're waiting for
(34:32):
confirmation on what happenedwith the lander. It seems like
it's at at the point where theyshould have heard back. We don't
know yet if that's a problem,but what they're showing here,
it looks like the this is theresilience lander, their second
lander that they built that justattempted to land on the moon.
(34:57):
It does have the ability to you.To make adjustments for itself.
It could be a communicationblackout. They were, I believe,
supposed to have land in a veryflat plane, but that could also
mean there was a lot of debris,right? So if the thrusters are
putting up a bunch of dust, thatmeans that the antenna that's
(35:18):
supposed to communicate datawhere it is, all that stuff say,
Hey, I'm alive like that couldbe blocked by the dust. You.
Hello and welcome to Today InSpace. I'm gonna start this
(00:03):
episode talking about whathappened with the ispace moon
landing that was supposed tooccur last week, and we'll say
what the team found and ourthoughts about it. I know
there's been a lot of like, bigthemes of questions that have
been asked around this that I'mgonna try to touch on and then
at the end of the episode, foranyone who wasn't available to
(00:24):
join us live for the landingHangout, we're gonna have clips
from that. So some of the bestquestions, some of the some of
the moments that just kind oflike happen naturally, but if
you're interested in likegetting to learn more about
space, or having someone thereto ask questions that's not AI
or something like that. That'swhat we're doing on those live
hangouts. So make sure to followus online, Today In Space pod on
(00:47):
Instagram and on x, and then atToday In Space on Tiktok and
Today In Space podcast onFacebook. And that's a great
place if you just want to askquestions about space and learn
a little bit more, join acommunity of people that are
watching this all live. So gocheck out those lives. Follow us
online, because that's wherewe're going to be doing those
live, including our YouTubechannel. Of course, if you want
(01:07):
to ask a question anytime, oryou're a little shy and you
don't want to jump into the chator anything live, we've got an
email todayspacepodcast@gmail.com we can ask
your question anytime or ask fortopics that you'd like us to
cover here on the show. So Ispace m2 this is the second
attempt by the Japanese companyI space it's a publicly traded
(01:28):
company in Japan. It was a veryinteresting mission, obviously,
tonally, right? Because Ibelieve it was just Luxembourg
was creating the tenaciousrover, right? This micro rover
that was going to be on boardand had a camera on a mini
shovel, and if it had landedsuccessfully, would have gotten
HD views of this micro rovertraveling on the moon. And there
(01:49):
was the resilience lander, whichis the second hakuso R lander.
But we ended up finding out fromthis was that the moon is as
hard as it's been for everyone,regardless of your country of
origin, of the diversity of thepeople that you have in your
business or company, or in thecase of countries, you know,
(02:10):
governments, right? Governmentprograms like China's and NASA
and Jackson and Roscosmos forRussia, like there's in the ESA,
the European Space Agency, whichhad technology, among others on
this mission, going and landingon the moon is not easy, and
that's exactly what we foundout. The actual live broadcast
(02:31):
ended early without any kind ofdecision. So the status update,
the lander descended from analtitude of approximately 100
kilometers to approximately 20kilometers, and then
successfully fired its mainengine as planned to begin
deceleration, while the lander'sattitude was confirmed to be
nearly vertical, telemetry waslost thereafter, and no data
indicating a successful landingwas received. Even after the
(02:53):
scandal scheduled. Scandalschedule, scheduled landing time
had passed, and as they sayhere, based on the currently
available data, the MissionControl Center has been able to
confirm the following the laserrange finder used to measure the
distance to the lunar surfaceexperienced delays in obtaining
valid measurement values. As aresult, the lander was unable to
(03:14):
decelerate sufficiently to reachthe required speed for the
planned lunar landing. Based onthese circumstances, it is
currently assumed that thelander likely performed a hard
landing on the lunar surface,and so that's almost similar to
what happened to them on thefirst try. And quite honestly,
what seems to be happening tomost people that try and attempt
(03:37):
to land on the moon. The samething happened to Israel and
that they landed too fast andtoo hard. It happened on the
initial hago to our mission forI space right? And one that
landing ran out of fuel, and sothey weren't able to slow down
this time for them, they did nothave the right altitude with
that laser range finder. It tooktoo long to communicate with the
(03:59):
system to confirm the altitude,and it was going, I believe it
was 50 to 60 meters per second,which is extremely fast. And so
even a second or two leaves youwhere you have to slow down and
decelerate. Well, you can't doit fast enough. And so the
question is, is this a rangefinder problem? Right? Was the
range finder they used, notactually able to do what it
(04:21):
needed to do in space, in the inthe environment of space, but
maybe in testing it did allalong. You know, the moon
surface is highly reflective, soit makes you wonder about the
ability of a laser range finder.You know, how many times has
that laser range finder beentested in space? And I know, I
know I'm sounding like myprofessors that I was always at
(04:42):
odds with in school about flyingonly, flight Heritage Hardware.
Flight heritage being somethingthat's flown in space before,
right as a record of workingthat is a real thing in the
space industry. And while Ithink when I was in school, in
the this is in the end of the.Space shuttle era, when I was in
school for that, it was almostlike a an orthodoxy of thought,
(05:06):
right? It was like, you can'tfly anything unless it has a
very long list of flightheritage, which really limited
what you could send up to space.And companies like SpaceX and
others like Rocket Lab have haveshown that you can fly new
hardware and test new hardwarequickly and show that it
actually does work in space ormaybe it doesn't. And then you
(05:26):
can move on and try the nexthardware design, you know? And
here we are with a company withJapan, where they're trying to
do it for the first time, right?They don't have necessarily,
like the clips program for NASA,where NASA is sharing knowledge
with people like Firefly andintuitive machines. So people
that have the knowledge aboutwhat it takes to land on the
(05:47):
moon and critique and progressof you need to show this before
we're able to put this on to aspacecraft. Japan's never done
this before, and it's not likeNASA was just giving that help
freely, or would have been aservice that that company would
have had to pay for. And that'snot saying they can't that I
space, or any country that'strying this for the first time
can't land on the moon, but itshows how difficult it really,
(06:11):
really is. And a few otherthoughts about this that I want
to share before we go into thelive recap of the broadcast,
which was a lot of fun, really,if you haven't checked out our
our live streams and hung outwhile we do them. I know they're
random, because stuff that goeson in space is sometimes very
random the time of day andcompletely depends on where it
is in space or if the range hasgood enough weather to launch a
(06:35):
rocket at the space right. Sothat all aside, you should
definitely, definitely check itout anytime we are live. But one
thing that we found out from thepost landing broadcast was that
apparently, from Moon Landingattempt one in 2022 for ispace,
they did not change anythingother than software for the next
(06:56):
mission. And so the firstmission, one for ispace, again,
ran out of fuel, so they had toadjust how they were using fuel,
when they would use fuel. AndI'm sure there's plenty more
that I haven't even touched on,but that was the answer we were
given from the leadership, thetechnical leadership of ispace.
And so when you have somethinglike the rangefinder failing to
communicate fast enough with thesystem to fire the engines to
(07:21):
decelerate properly, which meansyou're going to splat on the
ground because it's too late,right? You had your shot. You
missed it. It's a really, reallyinteresting scenario that a lot
of engineers will run into. Thisis why I think I'm stuck on this
and fascinated by it, but onlyhaving done a software update
from Mission one to mission two,it shows you that they're in a
(07:44):
really tough spot, because thecompany's plan for missions
three and four were to move tothe larger Apex lander, and if
they have struggled to slow downthe spacecraft ultimately right
the application of them landingOn the moon, they got everything
right up to needing to do thatlast burn, to decelerate
(08:05):
properly on the second one, onthe first one, they they still
failed to decelerate properly,but they ran out of fuel. So if
you're using a bigger lander,you have more momentum, which
means you're going to need areally good understanding of how
you're going to slow thatspacecraft down, right? You've
got this big thing that needsmore energy to get to the moon.
(08:26):
And the way that they did theirorbit, you know, Firefly that is
the only one to successfullyland on the moon, country or
company since India's landing afew years ago. Firefly is the
only one that's done it. Andthey flew on the same SpaceX
rocket as I space did, and Ispace took five months to orbit,
(08:50):
to get to the moon, and that wasa good strategy, because it was
a lower energy way of getting tothe moon, to lunar orbit. You
know when in Apollo 11, whichwe'll talk about in a second
here, that was a very highenergy transfer, right? They
were going extremely fast, andthey had to do some serious
decelerations to actually get tothe point where they could then
(09:12):
softly touch down on the moon.And I space had the advantage of
taking a longer time to getthere, which meant they didn't
have to shed off as muchmomentum and speed and
acceleration. But if you'regoing to a bigger lander, and
it's on hardware you haven'ttested yet, you have this big
unknown of What didn't we getright about this on a smaller
(09:34):
lander that we had two tries atand we didn't make any hardware
changes,
what are they going to be doingto ensure and double down and
triple down on the mistakes thatthey know about, and be diligent
and disciplined enough to workaround mistakes or things that
they're not even aware are aproblem yet, or that they you
(09:57):
know, one thing you could dothat's an awesome. Option. I
don't know if it's the company'soption, but an option you could
do is go one more mission, applyeverything you learned from
mission to to build on what youdid, right? Because they did do
a lot of other things, right,right? The the rest of the orbit
going to the moon before thatlanding period was done well,
(10:20):
and they had issues with it thelast time. So the question is,
why wouldn't you just go doinganother one of these landers to
prove out that you've actuallyfigured it out, and then move on
to the next one? And I think thereality of being a private
company doing this space game,and not only in the private
sector, but a public company, apublicly traded company, right?
(10:43):
They have stock price to worryabout. Well, as an engineer, I
would rather figure out what weneeded to learn what we got
wrong, and then fix it beforemoving on to the bigger lander.
They may not have that luxury.And I'm sure you know, the the
three individuals that were onthe post moon landing, they they
(11:06):
were barraged by some veryserious questioning, and it was
not a very great day for the ispace team, as far as
leadership, having to deal withthe repercussions of failing a
second time, and almost worse,not having the answer to know if
they really did fail, eventhough the data points to most
(11:29):
likely they did. And one of thethings that was asked of me
during the broadcast was like,how did they figure out whether
it landed? Because that dataneeds to be beamed from the
lander back to Earth. And so ifthe lander loses communication
and then it lands or crashes,there's no more data to come
back. And so they really do haveto be like a detective, piecing
(11:52):
together what they know. Andhere in the data they did get
back, they did notice that thatrange finder just did not
respond fast enough, it probablydidn't get a good reading. That
would be my guess, but again,it's just a guess, and it's
going to take people who arevery knowledgeable about those
systems and those readings toparse through it and determine
(12:12):
it, and then they're still onlymaking their best guess. And so
moving into this larger lander,while small incremental
movements like it has more moremass and so more momentum. So
it's a little bit more stablewith each thruster that's fired.
It's also going to require morefuel for every move. So it's not
(12:34):
a great place that they're in,and it's, it's unclear if the
smaller lander that they sent upis was affected by the launch,
that a more sturdy, strongerlander is going to help the
issues that they did have. Sothey're really going to be
shooting in the dark and kind oftaking another gamble at the
(12:56):
next steps. And I'm sure there'ssome things that transfer over,
but ultimately they're movingwith a bigger, new lander, and
ispace plans to do both of thoselaunches in the same year, and
that will be very interesting. Ibelieve it was 2027, so the
ispace team will be working nonstop. It seems we may get an
(13:18):
orbital picture we did last timewith I spaces, first landing, we
got an image from orbit beforeand after, so you could see the
impact. But we, you know, we'll,we'll wait to see that.
Unfortunately, the moon takesanother, another victim in going
to the moon and trying to land.And that brings me to my last
point, which is that I think oneof the most impactful questions,
(13:42):
and good questions that I thinkpeople are asking around this
mission is, how did the Apollo11 moon landing the late 60s?
How did they land that with thattechnology, and yet, with all of
this technology that we havetoday and money and resources
that we can put behind going tothe moon? Why is nobody, aside
(14:04):
from Firefly, why is nobody ableto land on the moon? And I think
it's a great question, and Ithink there's an environmental
factor, right? NASA of theApollo program was a defense
level budget, right? So theamount of money that they had
for the space program wasastronomical, and they were
(14:27):
fighting a global arms race ofgetting to the moon right
against the Russians. And sothere's a different motivation
and a different cohesiveness ofthat group in that task, and I'm
not that doesn't put down Ispace, or anyone else that's
attempting this. Now, it's notsaying that they can't have
(14:47):
something that is equally asgood or as able to provide a
successful mission to the moon,but there was a there was a
different attitude back then,and the people that were doing
math back then. And were able todouble check and triple check in
us at a speed in their own head,the math that was happening
because they could not rely onthe computer. So there was a
(15:09):
different level of buy in,instead of kind of the position
that mission control is in inthis robotic scenario where
you're not reacting live to thefeedback of the spacecraft, like
the Apollo 11 astronauts were.These were the the right stuff
astronauts, right? These werethe test pilots who were
(15:31):
arguably the best of the best,and they were able to adjust
like even the Apollo 11 landingalmost didn't happen correctly,
right? It was, but it was, butit was because of the humans on
board. And that was a hugedriving force between the US
approach and Russia's approach.Russia's approach was, or the
USSR approach was autonomous,let the machine do everything,
(15:54):
and the human is there for theride, right there, the monkey,
if you will, and the US was thatno the human intelligence and
our pilots, they're going toknow what to do. And it that did
play out, and that's one hugefactor that this robotic mission
had to contend with. And whensomething hardware wise, like
(16:15):
the rangefinder was taking toolong to respond, once they
missed that window, it was overwhere an astronaut could have
overridden certain factors,reacted in a certain way, done
something that was not pre,written out in code in order to
make the landing successful. Andthen on top of it, just the
(16:36):
level of survival instinct thatwas in play there that just
isn't there in a robotic sense,and in one day it'll get there,
right? The reason why we haveairline travel like we do in
today's world is because of thatlevel of automation and and
we've done it enough times thatwe know most of the scenarios
that will happen. And so why wasApollo 11 that much like, why is
(17:02):
the Apollo 11 Moon Landing somuch more impressive? Because
they did it even against all theodds. And now we're seeing, we
finally have enough peopletrying to land on the moon that
we're seeing just how hard itis. And as I was saying in the
live broadcast, and I've beentrying to get this point across,
the moon is like untouched land.It's a frontier that humans,
(17:27):
aside from one location, uh, anarea
we haven't been there's therearen't that many satellites
there. There isn't GPS, therearen't roads, everything there
is untouched by humanity for themost part. And many of the
things that we rely on intoday's world, the amazing tech
(17:49):
that we do have, we rely on thattremendously. And so going to a
place that does not have thosethings requires a discipline and
a knowledge of, how do younavigate space? How do you how
do you travel land? How do youmake sure that there are
redundancies on board that ifthat laser range finder doesn't
(18:09):
work, we can still figure it outin the time that we need to
figure it out. So the reasonApollo 11 was successful was
because of the trained humansand all of the people, the
hundreds, 1000s of people thatwere behind the Apollo program
that helped make that possible,filling, filling in all the gaps
and and trying to attack theproblem from every area to make
(18:31):
sure that these human beings hadthe best chance of landing.
That's very even with all ofthose resources. It's extremely
difficult to do, and in the caseof governments, India is the
only other country that's beenable to do that in recent
memory, even though China hasdone this as well. So it's not
(18:51):
that it's impossible, but it'seither going to take you a lot
of chances, or you need to getreally lucky at figuring out a
way to get to the moon, thenrepeat that, and then you can
work outside the box. Andunfortunately, the position that
I space is in is they need tostill find that routine path of
(19:14):
getting there and doing it witha new lander. So again, we wish
I space all the luck. Iappreciated all the questions
and everyone reaching out aboutthis. It got kind of
underwritten. The failure gotkind of underneath the wake of
the whole Elon Trump scenario.So we have not talked about
that, because even if we wantedto, it would change two days
(19:38):
later. So if you guys want us tocover that. You can let me know.
But otherwise, we're going towait until it all rolls out and
we're going to find out moreabout who's going to be the next
leader of NASA, because they nowneed a new administrator, now
that Jared Isaac mins thing hasbeen taken away his nomination.
(19:58):
So again, lots. Craziness, a 25%budget cut for NASA on the
voting block. There's a lot ofthings happening right now. We
will do a review once the dusthas settled on all of this,
because we did have a Jaredisaacman Episode lined up that
is now not gonna be relevantanymore, so we'll take the the
(20:21):
beatings we've gotten so far,and we'll keep pushing forward,
adapting to everything thathappens and just making the most
of it, folks. So thank you forjoining us for Today In Space as
always. Please make sure tosubscribe wherever you are on
Youtube, Spotify Apple podcast,wherever it is that you watch or
listen to podcast first. Thankyou, especially if you've made
it this far, and you can gocheck us out online at Today In
(20:44):
Space pod on Instagram and XToday In Space on tick tock and
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That's my personal account.That's where we'll go live
there. And then, as always, ourwebsite today in space.net our
email for new topics, questions,Today In Space podcast@gmail.com
(21:08):
and then we've got a lot of 3dprinting stuff coming up very,
very soon. So make sure to checkout, eg, 3d printing.com that's
where you're going to see ournew blogs for the part detective
case files, 3d printingmysteries that we're solving.
And if you need something 3dprinted, whether it's a
replacement part, or you've gota business idea, or you've just
(21:31):
got something that you need toget 3d printed, especially if,
like, you're a business, we'rewe are the part success service
for you, so we can help make ithappen and bring your ideas into
reality with 3d printing, eg, 3dprinting.com check out our stuff
at 80 printing on Instagram, andthat's it, folks, thanks for
(21:51):
joining us, and we'll close outthis episode with the best clips
from the live broadcast fromlast week. Thanks for joining
us. Have a good week. See younext time. Hello. Hello
everybody. Welcome. We are herefor landing Hangouts, not a
launching out the landinghangout the Japanese company
(22:14):
ispace, second attempt atlanding on the moon. We have the
broadcast in the background andthe original broadcast is in
Japanese. So the one we'relistening to is off YouTube, and
this is the English version. Soyou're going to hear someone
else translating everything,but, um Yeah, we're here to hang
out. 317 is roughly Easterntime, so about 45 minutes from
(22:38):
now is when landing is so we'rehere. We're hanging out. Say hi
in the chat. This is your firsttime. Let us know. Thanks for
joining. All right, so a lot ofgood stuff shared there. I did
want to touch on some of it,because I think it's, I think
it's really important todiscuss, so the chat is open if
(23:01):
you have any questions. But whatI want to do, let's talk a
little bit about that. So a lotof people will ask, you know, I
remember when I started Today InSpace podcast. This was 10 years
ago, and back then, the shuttlehad just retired. SpaceX was not
launching rockets like all thetime, so it was a very different
era. And when the Space Shuttlewas retired. People thought
(23:21):
that, you know, we stopped goingto space, you know, because we
stopped sending humans onAmerican rockets. Now that's a
very American thing to think,but it had been happening this
whole time, right? The US waspaying Russia per seat to send
astronauts up to theInternational Space Station,
which has had multiple decadesof continuous human traveling on
(23:45):
board, but like that's wherewe've spent a lot of the
resources on space. It's been inorbit around Earth. We haven't
gone back to the moon since theApollo era ended. So this is a
brand new time where NASAshooting for the moon, Artemis
one orbited the Moonrobotically, and Artemis two is
planned to launch. A lot of thatplan is still in flux. Artemis
(24:09):
three should be using thestarship from SpaceX, because
they were awarded the humanlanding contract to go to the
moon. And then all thesecompanies have been invested
Japan, having a company bringingthemselves to the moon, NASA,
funding different companies,especially American companies
like machines and Firefly, whichwas successful landing on the
(24:32):
moon not that long ago. Sothere's this push to go back to
the moon, but the moon is like afrontier, right? It is not
something that that we have goneto very far. We don't have GPS
everywhere. We don't know whatall the surfaces are like. We've
(24:52):
seen footage, but we don't havea good idea of everything on the
moon. So it's like traveling tothe Americas for. The first
time. So a lot of these missionsare about sending equipment that
helps us understand the moon.And I space is one of the
companies building the landers,and in this case, the micro
rover that's gonna have a cameraif they land successfully, which
(25:15):
is gonna be really cool. Butthese are the companies that are
allowing the like lunar economy,whatever that is to exist, but
there's demand to go to the moonand to understand it better. And
China's going. Russia doesn'thave many plans, but I would
wager that they're probablygoing to get more involved like
(25:37):
they used to. And the USobviously has NASA investing in
companies doing this right? Sothere is a huge push that's been
a long time coming back to themoon, and this is one of those
missions that could be veryhistoric. So just say hi. Let's
learn more about the landingphases here in
(25:57):
the spacecraft, the team willsend a command to initiate the
automatic descent sequence.Throughout this time, the
spacecraft will slowly getcloser to the surface of the
Moon while reducing its speeduntil finally it's close enough
and slow enough to gently touchon the surface of the moon. At
that time, the team will regaincontrol and will start the
preparations for the surfaceoperation phase. So just before
(26:19):
we start the landing phase. Weare about 100 kilometers above
the surface of the moon. Andthen we start our first phase of
the landing, which is the Dorbit in session. This is a very
short fire from the lander,which basically tries to bring
us closer to the surface of themoon. We come to a very
important phase, to 25kilometers to the moon. And once
that finishes, we start thesecond phase of landing, which
(26:42):
we call the course descendingphase. In this phase, the lander
is basically just coastingaround and trying to get closer
and closer to the moon'ssurface. And then right about
when we are closest to the moon,which is around 18 kilometers.
All
right, some of the bestsimulations I've seen of the
loop of the lunar landing, itshows how fast everything is
(27:03):
actually moving.
And we were going very fast, sowe fired all of our thrusters.
We burn very furiously, and thenwe try to reduce it as much as
we can. And after certain amountof time, we reach the fourth
phase, which is the breakingburn, slash, pitch, drop phase.
So we were horizontal. This iswhere the money is made.
Approach our landing site, andthen we reach the fifth phase of
(27:25):
our landing, which is theterminal decent phase. At this
time, our lander is almostvertical. We have reduced almost
all of the horizontal velocity,and now we're loving the
simulation. View our landingsite after above just 20 meters
or 10 meters above the surface,we reach the sixth phase, which
is the terminal landing. At thispoint, we cut off our main
engines and we are only landingslowly with the assist thrusters
(27:49):
and trying to land as softly aswe can on our landing site. And
once that finishes, we are atthe moon. So cool,
it's difficult to be a sciencecommunicator, who do Space
Science Podcast, right? So Iwould consider myself a science
communicator. It's really notthat easy to get videos that
(28:12):
portray reality well, that a lotof them are like marketing, like
videos right where they lookreally cool, but they're not
really telling you it's like aspace movie for the most part.
There's a few that do it reallywell, but they're showing you
things that are like, notactually how things work. And
that video showing the relativespeed of the spacecraft. You
know, if your perspective is,I'm on the spacecraft, the
(28:35):
speeds of the lunar surfacemoving underneath spot on, I
space. That was killer. I lovethat. ETA for landing with a
brick. Yes, it does seem like amini country effort, Europe,
Japan. And then there's a bunchof payloads that are on board
(28:57):
from commercial customers. I canpull that list up, but 317, so
about 20 minutes from now, we'vebeen lucky. In the last 510,
years, have multiple countriesattempt landing on the moon.
There's China, India, Israel,the US, and then and companies,
(29:20):
and I may be missing one. Idon't know if Russia has tried
to land something in a while,but in history, right? That it's
not a long list that has doneit, and a good portion of those
that launched and tried to landon the moon have failed. And
it's not easy, and
let's celebrate. You know whenwe hear the official
announcement. So this is goingto be, let's go very quiet
(29:44):
moment in a waiting for thevery, very special moment. Well,
you see this altitude is onlyfive kilometer, and the speed is
much less. We're going real
slow. It's just good. It's justwhat you need for soft landing.
You know,
(30:04):
500 kilometer per hour is, yeah,the deceleration has been a very
rapidly happening. It's lessthan a full kilometer. All the
thrusters are working perfectly,is how I see on the screen. So
now it's less than a 400kilometer per hour, and it's
(30:28):
only three kilometers inaltitude. This is a bullet train
kind of speed, so you canprobably not imagine what it's
like. This is everything isn'tworking out
great, all right, under aminute. I mean, a minute, 23
seconds, and it's estimated,because the way they know is
(30:52):
that the lander communicatesback to them. So if we don't
hear anything, it didn't makeit, but there's still going to
be a lag on when we hear soabout a minute. So
it's less than a minute untilthe scheduled landing time.
(31:14):
The animation is not caught upyet. See again, we just have to
wait until it's landed
less than a minute away.
Very, very for joining us.Welcome here for them.
Everyone's
(31:34):
super concentrated. The
Moon landing here, eye space.We're waiting for the lander to
touch down and sendcommunication back to Earth. We
need
to check that telemetry.
So what makes landing so nervewracking?
(31:58):
This is, you know, the where weneed to be patient and to wait
for just a while, three
years of long, hard, difficult,complex, complicated work, to
wait for communications
from the lander. It can't takesome more time.
(32:21):
So movement in the room. Notsure what to make of that. Maybe
a bunch of people that just needto unwind while they wait
before sharing the status topeople in the venue and those
who are watching online.
(32:41):
Now they're trying to see whatthey can see, probably comparing
against what they expected. Whoknows if they're getting
anything, but it looks likewe've got a little bit of
activity over here.
Had you waiting, but we couldactually play some video, which
(33:02):
we couldn't do before because ofthis. You know, the timing has
come, so be great, and if youcan wait and while watching
these videos, but I will. So
this looks, this looks more likea team of engineers trying to
come up with with answers, notnecessarily for a problem, but
what will they do next? Got noaudio here, but this looks like
(33:27):
the inside of the lander. Thequestion is, what happened? Did
it land successfully andsomething didn't deploy that
they need? Like maybe the powerdidn't start? Did or maybe they
lost power, and it's not thesun. The solar panels aren't
generating enough power. Coulddust have been a culprit here?
(33:49):
Are they only getting partialdata and not the whole thing?
You know, there could bemultiple lines of data they're
looking for and they're onlygetting maybe, you know, like a
heartbeat, but no telemetry orno power readings, that type of
thing. But really cool view.Here's really cool views here.
(34:11):
That's the tenacious roverthere, micro rover that's on
board. They're successful. We'llsee that roll out onto the
surface and 14 days of hopefullyan HD camera and a little rover
with a shovel. But for those arejust joining we're waiting for
(34:32):
confirmation on what happenedwith the lander. It seems like
it's at at the point where theyshould have heard back. We don't
know yet if that's a problem,but what they're showing here,
it looks like the this is theresilience lander, their second
lander that they built that justattempted to land on the moon.
(34:57):
It does have the ability to you.To make adjustments for itself.
It could be a communicationblackout. They were, I believe,
supposed to have land in a veryflat plane, but that could also
mean there was a lot of debris,right? So if the thrusters are
putting up a bunch of dust, thatmeans that the antenna that's
(35:18):
supposed to communicate datawhere it is, all that stuff say,
Hey, I'm alive like that couldbe blocked by the dust. You.
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