NASA Captures Image of Lander's Crash Site

Japanese company's craft slammed into the moon last month
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 20, 2025 2:37 PM CDT
NASA Snaps Crash Site Image of Japanese 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 on June 11, 2025.   (NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University via AP)

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, per the AP. The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris, or the 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, which was launched from Cape Canaveral in January.

(More NASA stories.)

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