An attempt to land a commercially built spacecraft on the surface of the moon looked to have ended in failure on Thursday, two years after its predecessor, launched by the same Japanese company, crashed following an uncontrolled descent.
But the company’s live stream covering the landing attempt ended almost 30 minutes later, with mission managers unable to establish communication with the craft, and its fate uncertain.
“We view the success of the lunar landing as merely a stepping stone toward that goal.
“Esa is extremely proud and thrilled to support ispace Mission 2.
A contract with Nasa will see ispace attempting to send a larger rover to the moon on a mission scheduled for 2027.
Two years after its predecessor, launched by the same Japanese company, crashed after an uncontrollable descent, an attempt to land a commercially built spacecraft on the moon appear to have failed Thursday.
Resilience, an uncrewed spacecraft from the Tokyo-based company ispace, was slated to land at Mare Frigoris (the Sea of Cold) in the moon’s far north at 3:17 p.m. ET on Thursday (4:17 a.m. JST on Friday), making history as the first non-US commercial lander to do so.
However, mission managers were unable to communicate with the craft, and its fate was uncertain, so the company’s live stream of the landing attempt ended nearly thirty minutes later.
Just prior to the feed being removed, an ispace commentator stated that “Mission control center members will continuously attempt to communicate with the lander,” promising an update at a press briefing “in a few hours.”.
It reminded me of ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 failure in April 2023, when all contact with the spacecraft was lost at the planned landing time. A software glitch later proved that the lander was still speeding toward the lunar surface when it thought it had already touched down.
Resilience was launched on January 15 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that delivered Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, a Texas startup. On March 2, Blue Ghost, which had taken a quicker route to the moon, made its own historic landing.
A major blow to iSpace’s Venture Moon program, which it claimed would be “laying the groundwork” for a prolonged human presence on the moon, would be the apparent failure of Hakuto-R Mission 2. A lunar city with a thousand inhabitants is one of the ambitious plans; the first people are expected to arrive as early as 2040.
Additionally, it intends to eventually host thousands more space tourists for brief stays.
Takeshi Hakamada, the CEO of ispace, stated in a prepared statement prior to Thursday’s landing attempt, “We want to create the cislunar economy, where the moon and Earth are economically and socially intertwined.”.
“We see the lunar landing’s success as just a step in that direction. We firmly think that this project, if it is successful in the long run, will help ensure that all people can live sustainably on Earth. “”.
For the two-week mission, Resilience was scheduled to send out Tenacious, a small moon rover built in Europe. For monitoring purposes, the European Space Agency (Esa) and its partners would have transmitted telemetry and high-definition video footage back to Earth.
The rover is equipped with a shovel designed to gather soil samples for analysis as investigators continue to look for signs of the moon’s ice or water that could support life.
Under an agreement signed in 2020, the US space agency NASA will pay iSpace $5,000 for a piece of regolith that it can examine as part of its own plans to put humans back on the moon for the first time since 1972 and eventually on Mars.
Géraldine Naja, Esa’s director of commercialization, industry, and competitiveness, told reporters earlier Thursday that while Tenacious is a symbolic representation of the future of lunar exploration, it is also a potentially very successful technological accomplishment.
Esa is ecstatic and incredibly proud to be supporting ispace Mission 2. A great illustration of how we can assist emerging space actors in Europe [and] commercialization is this. We look forward to eventually supporting a long-term European-Japanese presence on the moon. “”.
A more unusual payload was also on board the 11-pound (5-kg) rover: Moonhouse, a model installation made by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg that would have been the first property—albeit a tiny one—to be placed on the moon.
The bright red Swedish-style house was supposed to have added some color to the gray background of the northern moon.
In an interview published on Thursday, Genberg told space . com, “It’s a small house in a vast, empty place, a symbol of belonging, curiosity, and vulnerability.”.
“I hope it encourages people to consider how we relate to space and to acknowledge how fragile and special our own world is.”. “”.
Uncrewed robotic lunar explorers have been successfully landed by the governments of five nations: the US, Russia, China, India, and Japan. However, commercial efforts have had more setbacks than successes in recent years.
The Texas-based company Intuitive Machines (IM) made two unsuccessful attempts in addition to the previous ispace disaster. Their Odysseus and Athena landers, launched in February 2024 and March 2025, respectively, ended prematurely when both spacecraft flipped over upon landing.
Compared to IM and Firefly’s selected landing sites, Mare Frigoris is a flatter region of the moon with fewer boulders.
After attributing the 2023 crash landing to a software glitch, Ispace also decided to take its time getting to the moon. Resilience’s five-month journey during a so-called low-energy transfer allowed the company to thoroughly assess its systems and computer programs.
Under a deal with NASA, iSpace will try to visit the moon in 2027 with a larger rover.
