SpaceX F9 - HAKUTO-R Mission 1 - SLC-40

Launch Date: December 11
Launch Window: 2:38am EST (11:38pm PST on the 10th, 07:38 UTC)
Launch site: SLC-40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), Florida
Core Booster Recovery: RTLS - LZ-2
Booster: B1073.5
Fairings: Reused - 4th and 5th
Mass: 340 kg plus a bunch of cubesats
Orbit: TLI
Yearly Launch Number: 56th

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the first commercial lunar lander for ispace, a Japan-based company that competed for the Google Lunar XPRIZE and is now developing a series of robotic lunar landers. The first lunar lander, called ispace Mission 1, was assembled in partnership with ArianeGroup and carries a package of international and commercial payloads, including two small lunar rovers from the United Arab Emirates and Japan. The mission will target a landing in the Lacus Somniorum region of the moon. NASA’s Lunar Flashlight CubeSat will be a rideshare payload on this launch.

Hakuto - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Grendal]

What happened:

 

[Cosmacelf]

What happened:

Summary: bad software design. Longer summary: Software writers had a poor understanding of lunar topography and what it could do to the sensors. Flying over a largish crater caused the software to think radar sensor was giving it bad data, so the software turned off the radar sensor entirely, at that point relying on dead recogning with poor understanding of the terrain. To top it off, they tested it in a simulated environment, but then changed the landing area and then failed to resimulate in that new landing area.

Amateur hour all around honestly.

 

[JB47394]

To top it off, they tested it in a simulated environment, but then changed the landing area and then failed to resimulate in that new landing area.

That was the source of the problem, not the software. If the software guys had been allowed to run the simulation, which was their testing process, they'd have spotted the problem and handled it.

 

[Cosmacelf]

That was the source of the problem, not the software. If the software guys had been allowed to run the simulation, which was their testing process, they'd have spotted the problem and handled it.

The software kinda sucked too IMHO.

 

[ecarfan]

That was the source of the problem, not the software. If the software guys had been allowed to run the simulation, which was their testing process, they'd have spotted the problem and handled it.

This is a very embarrassing failure for JAXA.

 

[JB47394]

This is a very embarrassing failure for JAXA.

If you say so. I think they did an awesome job and have nothing to be embarrassed about.

 

[ecarfan]

Yes, if they had landed successfully it would definitely have been an awesome mission. But as it turned out, it was more like the Mars Climate Orbiter failure.

 

[Electroman]

There is nothing embarrassing about it..

 

[scaesare]

I think that on the scale of "Nothing to be Embarrassed About" (Unknowable difficult to anticipate issue/event) and "Self Inflicted Foot Bullet Wounds" (Using different units, such as metric and Imperial and not converting between them) this falls somewhere in the middle.

Was it a not easily foreseen external event? No. Was it an anticipated potential issue for which they had a test regime they didn't correctly execute? Yes.

I'd say it's a solid 6 on the "Gonna get Fired" scale.