Are there any images published? I'm asking this because the only scientific instrument aboard the spacecraft was MDC, but there should be some images from the optical navigation system and I'm unable to find them...

I have a processed version of the impact sequence on my website. However, the reason the images are rarely seen is that they are extremely low quality. Hiten was spin stabilized, and although the camera had software t compensate for smearing, the images certainly are not sharp. Also, theyare only 4-bit - even Mariner 4 and Pioneer 10/11 used 6-bit encoding!

I was playing around with the colorized version of the above mosaic, and have also made a gif with it. It is nowhere near Kayuga or even Ranger quality, but still kind of fun.

Click to view attachment

Here is a colorized version:

Click to view attachment

I resurrect this old topic for this collection of screen grabs of the launch of Hiten
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=31379