What caused Europe's Tenacious rover to crash on the Moon has been confirmed after investigation

An investigation has revealed why Europe’s Tenacious rover crashed on the Moon.

The Tenacious rover project had been put together with backing from the Luxembourg Space Agency and a Japanese company called ispace.

This rover was carried by a lander, called Resilience, which crashed on the Moon on June 6.

An investigation by ispace has revealed the cause.

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The Tenacious rover crashed on the Moon – but why?

The journey of Resilience began way back in January, when it took off on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

To say it took the long route to the Moon would be an understatement.

It went 684,000 miles through space before returning to land on our nearest natural satellite.

As it came into land, things were initially looking promising.

However, mission controllers lost contact with Resilience shortly after the main engine was fired.

Up until the final moments, the lander was practically in a vertical position, but then a suspected fault in the laser range finder caused it to crash.

As a result, the Tenacious rover – and the mission – was declared a loss.

After conducting an investigation, ispace has figured out the culprit behind the crash.

In the final phase of the landing, ‘the acquisition of valid measurements from the LRF was delayed’, as recently reported.

To put that in non-scientific terms, it meant that the spacecraft couldn’t correctly judge the distance to the surface.

At first, there was speculation that there had been an issue in the design process or during assembly.

But the report concluded that the LRF either experienced deterioration during flight, or the initial performance levels weren’t as high as expected.

This isn’t ispace’s first time dealing with this type of disappointment, however.

Back in December 2022, its first mission suffered the same fate due to bad telemetry, otherwise known as difficulty recording and transmitting the readings of an instrument.

Space exploration is a fast-developing field of science

You can barely keep up with the fast-changing world of space exploration these days.

We’ve got artificial intelligence decoding black holes, and a space camera revealing secrets from the edge of the galaxy.

Closer to Earth, we’ve got Honda launching a reusable rocket and the European Space Agency developing a telescope that can spot asteroids before they hit Earth.

All of this to say that each time something doesn’t go to plan, there are a whole bunch of things going right.

Science is all about progress, and progress isn’t always an easy ride.

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