Japanese startup Ispace prepares for lunar lander to touch down on the moon
Japanese startup Ispace has announced that its Resilience lunar lander has completed all planned orbital maneuvers while circling the moon and is now being readied for a landing attempt scheduled for early Friday morning.
The company released a statement Saturday saying the lander will begin its descent from a circular lunar orbit at 3:20 a.m. Friday, automatically firing its main propulsion system to gradually decelerate and adjust its altitude.
The goal is to achieve a soft landing near the Mare Frigoris, or Sea of Cold, in the moon's northern hemisphere.
'Resilience is now ready to attempt a historic landing on the moon, carrying not only the payloads of our customers, but also the hopes of our employees, their families, our partners and all of our supporters,' said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of Ispace, in the statement.
This is Ispace's second attempt at a moon landing following the failure of its Hakuto-R Mission 1 in April 2023, when a software error caused the lander to misjudge its altitude, resulting in a crash from approximately 5 kilometers above the lunar surface, according to a company postmortem analysis following the accident.
'We have leveraged the operational experience gained in Mission 1 and during this current voyage to the moon, and we are confident in our preparations for the success of this lunar landing,' Hakamada said.
The current mission — Hakuto-R Mission 2 — carries a diverse set of scientific and cultural payloads. Among them is the Tenacious microrover, which was developed in part with the European Space Agency and will collect lunar regolith under a contract with NASA, in one of the first transactions involving resources on the lunar surface and a significant step toward developing the cislunar economy.
If the mission is successful, Tenacious will become the first European-built rover to operate on the lunar surface.
Other onboard payloads include a lunar water electrolysis system, a module for food production in space and a deep-space radiation sensor.
Resilience is also carrying the Memory Disc — a collaborative effort with UNESCO and U.S.-based innovation platform Barrelhand — which contains 275 world languages and cultural artifacts. Also included are a commemorative alloy "Mobile Suit Gundam UC" plate by Bandai Namco and a small sculpture of a red house called "The Moonhouse" by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
The lander launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 15, alongside Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander, which landed March 2 and operated until 6:15 p.m. CDT on March 16. Resilience entered lunar orbit on May 7.
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