5.03.2025
Japanese moon exploration company ispace (9348.T), opens new tab said its Resilience lander will attempt a lunar touchdown at 4:24 a.m. on June 6 local time (1924 GMT on June 5) at the earliest, in its second attempt after the first shot failed in April 2023.
It would follow the successful moon landing on Sunday of U.S. company Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost spacecraft, which shared the same SpaceX rocket with ispace's Resilience in January.
Another American firm, Intuitive Machines (LUNR.O), opens new tab, also launched its second lunar lander Athena last week and aims for a touchdown in the coming days.
Quelle: Reuters
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Update: 7.05.2025
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Private Japanese lunar lander enters orbit around moon ahead of a June touchdown
A private lunar lander from Japan is now circling the moon, with just another month to go before it attempts a touchdown.
Tokyo-based ispace said Wednesday morning its Resilience lander entered lunar orbit.
“The countdown to lunar landing has now officially begun,” the company said in a statement.
SpaceX launched Resilience with U.S-based Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander in January. Firefly got there first in March, becoming the first private outfit to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Another American company, Intuitive Machines, landed a spacecraft on the moon a few days later, but it ended up sideways in a crater.
Now it’s ispace’s turn. It’s targeting the first week of June for Resilience’s touchdown. The company’s first lander crashed into the moon in 2023.
The lander holds a mini rover equipped with a scoop to gather lunar dirt for analysis as well as other experiments.
Quelle: AP
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ispace Completes Success 7 of Mission 2 Milestones
TOKYO–May 7, 2025–ispace, inc. (ispace) (TOKYO: 9348), a global lunar exploration company, announced today that its RESILIENCE lunar lander successfully entered lunar orbit on May 7, 2025, at 5:41 a.m. JST (May 6, 2025, 20:41 UTC). This marks the completion of Success 7 milestone of Mission 2 “SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon.”
ispace engineers performed the injection maneuver from the Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan in accordance with the mission operation plan. The orbital maneuver required a main thruster burn lasting approximately 9 minutes, the longest to date during Mission 2. RESILIENCE is now maintaining a stable attitude in its planned orbit above the lunar surface. Mission operations specialists are now preparing for final orbit maneuvers after reaffirming ispace’s ability to deliver spacecraft and payloads into lunar orbit. A lunar landing is scheduled for no earlier than June 5, 2025 (UTC) (June 6, 2025, JST).
“First and foremost, we are extremely pleased that the RESILIENCE lander successfully reached lunar orbit as planned today,” said Takeshi Hakamada, Founder & CEO of ispace. “We have successfully completed maneuvers so far by leveraging the operational experience gained in Mission 1, and I am very proud of the crew for successfully completing the most critical maneuver and entering lunar orbit. We will continue to proceed with careful operations and thorough preparations to ensure the success of the lunar landing.”
Previously, RESILIENCE completed all deep space orbital maneuvers at on April 24, 2025, at 10:00 UTC, returning the lander from deep space near to the Moon in order to complete the orbit injection. At its furthest distance, RESILIENCE was 1.1 million kilometers from Earth. Before that RESILIENCE completed a lunar flyby, verifying operation of the main propulsion system, as well as the related guidance, control, and navigation system. Following the flyby, the lander continued its deep space journey, spending approximately two months in a low-energy transfer orbit.
RESILIENCE was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:11:39 UTC, Jan. 15, 2025, and was successfully deployed from the rocket at 7:44:24 UTC. The RESILIENCE lander has completed the Earth orbit (① phase below) as well as the lunar flyby, known as Success 5. It has completed the low energy transfer orbit (② phase below) with completion of all deep space maneuvers and is now in lunar orbit.
Mission 2 Milestones
ispace has released a transparent set of criteria known as Mission 2 Milestones between launch and landing and aims to achieve the success criteria established for each of these milestones. The results from this mission as part of the HAKUTO-R lunar exploration program, will be weighed and evaluated against the criteria and lessons learned will be incorporated into future missions already in development.
Mission 2 Payloads
On board the RESILIENCE lunar lander will be commercial customer payloads including:
- Water electrolyzer equipment: From Takasago Thermal Engineering Co.
- Food production experiment: A self-contained module from Euglena Co.
- Deep space radiation probe: Developed by the Department of Space Science and Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan
- Commemorative alloy plate: Developed by Bandai Namco Research Institute, Inc. and modeled after “Charter of the Universal Century” from the animation Mobile Suit Gundam UC
- TENACIOUS micro rover: Developed by ispace-EUROPE, this rover will explore the landing site, collect lunar regolith, and relay data back to the lander. It will be equipped with a forward-mounted HD camera and a shovel.
- Moonhouse: A model house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg that will be mounted on the rover.
The RESILIENCE lander will serve as a cultural artifact, carrying a UNESCO memory disk that preserves linguistic and cultural diversity.
ispace is leveraging its global presence through its three business units in Japan, the U.S., and Luxembourg, for the simultaneous development of upcoming missions. Mission 2, featuring the RESILIENCE lunar lander, is led by ispace Japan and was launched on Jan. 15, 2025. In this mission, TENACIOUS micro rover developed by ispace Europe SA to be deployed on the lunar surface to conduct technological demonstration of regolith extraction as well as mobility on the lunar surface Mission 3, debuting the APEX 1.0 lunar lander, is led by ispace-U.S. and is expected to launch in 2026. The company’s fourth mission, which will utilize the Series 3 lander, currently being designed in Japan, is scheduled to be launched by 2027.
Quelle: ispace
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Update: 18.05.2025
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NASA’s LRO Views Japan’s RESILENCE Lunar Lander Landing Area
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) imaged the landing area of the ispace SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon Mission 2 RESILIENCE lunar lander which is slated to land on the surface of the Moon no earlier than June 5, 2025 (UTC). This view of the primary landing area is 3.13 miles (5,040 meters) wide and north is up. The site is in Mare Frigoris, a volcanic region interspersed with large-scale faults known as wrinkle ridges. Mare Frigoris formed over 3.5 billion years ago as massive basalt eruptions flooded low-lying terrain.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 4.06.2025
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What time will Japan's ispace Resilience probe land on the moon on June 5?
The Japanese company ispace is hoping to make some space history on Thursday (June 5), when it attempts to land a private spacecraft on the moon. But if you're hoping to watch it live, you'll need to know when and where to tune in.
The Resilience lander, the second-ever private ispace lunar probe, is on track for a midday landing in the northern reaches of the moon. Resilience is flying a mission of redemption for ispace, which failed a similar moon landing attemptwith its first effort, called Hakuto-R Mission 1, in April 2023.
Here's a look at what time ispace's Resilience moon will attempt to land on June 5, how to watch it and what may happen during the mission.
Currently, ispace's Resilience moon lander is scheduled to land on Thursday, June 5, at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT), though it will be 4:17 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Friday, June 6, at touchdown time. That landing time, announced in a June 4 update, is about 7 minutes earlier than ispace's earlier target of 3:24 p.m EDT (1924 GMT),.
That landing time follows a specific timeline of events ispace has laid out to deliver Resilience to the lunar surface. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Resilience toward the moon on Jan. 15 along with the private Blue Ghost moon lander built by Firefly Aerospace. (Blue Ghost successfully landed in the moon's Mare Crisium, or Sea of Crises, region on March 2.)
Unlike Blue Ghost, Resilience followed a "low energy transfer" path to reach the moon, which added months to the journey. It arrived in lunar orbit on May 6 and is finally ready for its landing attempt.
While ispace is targeting June 5 at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT) for the moon landing, that time could actually change. The prime landing spot is in the middle of Mare Frigoris, or the "Sea of Cold," on the near side of the moon's northern hemisphere. If ispace decides to use a backup landing site (there are three in all), those attempts would occur on different days and times.
"Should conditions change, there are three alternative landing sites that are being considered with different landing dates and times for each," ispace wrote in an update on social media.
Yes, you'll be able to watch ispace's Resilience lander attempt to touch down on the moon live as it happens, and you'll be able to pick which language you'd like to follow the mission when you do.
The livestreams will begin at 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT/3:10 a.m. JST on June 6)with the landing itself targeted for 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT; 4:17 a.m. JST on June 6).
"ispace will host a global live stream event with coverage of Resilience's landing attempt on the moon on June 6, 2025 (JST) (June 5, 2025, depending on location)," ispace wrote in an announcement. "The coverage will be broadcast in Japanese with English translation provided."
Both will be webcast via ispace's YouTube channel, with the English broadcast here and the Japanese broadcast here.
The Resilience moon lander will attempt to land on a vast basalt plain in the moon's near side northern hemisphere known as Mare Frigoris.
ispace targeted the same plain in 2023 when the company attempted to land its first moon lander on April 25 of that year. During that attempt, which crashed as mentioned above, ispace tried to land in Atlas Crater, which is 54 miles (87 kilometers) wide. ispace does not appear to be targeting the same crater for Resilience, which is also known as Hakuto-R Mission 2. (Hakuto-R is the name of ispace's lunar exploration program as well as its line of robotic rovers.)
Instead, the lander is expected to touch down in the northern region of Mare Frigoris, with three potential backup landing sites, according to a map released by ispace before launch.
The Japanese company ispace posted this photo of the moon's south polar region, taken by its Resilience lunar lander, on X on May 22, 2025. (Image credit: ispace)
Once on the moon, ispace's Resilience lander is expected to last about two weeks, or one lunar day. But the full mission, from launch on Jan. 15 to the end, will run about five months.
The spacecraft is equipped with solar panels to power its onboard instruments, and will spend that time conducting experiments with several payloads. They include the following:
- Water Electrolyzer Experiment: An experiment built by air conditioning equipment manufacturer Takasago Thermal Engineering Co. to test technology to generate oxygen and hydrogen from moon water.
- Algae-based food production module: An experiment designed by Euglena Co. to test ways to grow algae on the moon as a potential source of food.
- Deep Space Radiation Probe: A small detector that has been monitoring radation levels on Resilience throughout its months-long mission.
Resilience is also carrying a microrover called Tenacious, which was built by ispace's European subsidiary. If all goes well, the rover will be deployed on the surface to test its camera and sample-collection shovel for future sample return missions.
The Tenacious rover is also carying a work of art called "Moonhouse," a small red house designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, as part of a cultural programfor the mission.
Finally, Resilience is carrying a commemorative plate provided by Bandai Namco Research Institute, Inc. with an inscription based on the fictional document "Charter of the Universal Century" from the famed Japanese manga and science fiction series Gundam.
While ispace is hoping for a smooth landing of Resilience on June 5, it is possible the company may wave off the lunar touchdown due to technical or other concerns.
As a way to prepare for that, ispace has identified three different backup landing sites, all of them in the Sea of Cold, that the company could redirect Resilience to if its primary landing site is unavailable.
If ispace does decide to pursue a backup landing, the lunar touchdown would occur on a later day and time than targeted, the company has said. Exactly what day and when those attempts could occur is unclear, but we'll keep you posted if the situation arises.
Quelle: SC
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