Categories: Moon

Last Kaguya HDTV Images Before Impact

One of the last images taken by Kaguya before it impacted the Moon on June 11, 2009. Credit: JAXA

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The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has released the final still images taken by the onboard High Definition Television (HDTV) from Kaguya, just before it completed its mission by impacting the moon on June 11, 2009. An entire series of images were taken with an interval of about one minute by the HDTV (Teltephoto) while Kaguya maneuvered its way to impact in Gill Crater.

Here’s a link to a Flash animation showing the images in succession. Click the “up” arrow to proceed through the images.

The last image taken is basically just black as it approached the darkened bottom of the crater. This is the second to the last image taken:

Kaguya 2nd to last image. Credit: JAXA

Visible is the surface of the Moon getting closer as Kaguya approached impact.

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Kaguya launched on September 14, 2007 and spent nearly two years studying the moon before the planned impact. An Australian telescope observed the controlled crash of Japan’s Kaguya lunar probe into the moon Wednesday, an important warm-up act before a NASA’s LCROSS impactor attempts a similar feat in October. Here’s the series of images from Australia:

The image above shows a sequence of four frames around the impact time, with a bright impact flash visible in the second frame, and faintly seen in the third and fourth. Credit: Anglo-Australian Telescope by Jeremy Bailey (University of New South Wales) and Steve Lee (Anglo-Australian Observatory)

Browse through more images taken by the Kaguya HDTV Archives, the JAXA digital archives,, and the JAXA channel on YouTube.

Hat tip to Joel Raupe at Lunar Networks

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/