Ispace Begins One-Month Countdown as its Resilience Lander Enters Lunar Orbit

Tokyo-based aerospace company ispace announced on May 7 that its lunar lander, dubbed Resilience, has made its way into orbit around the moon. The spacecraft is now officially one month out from its inaugural lunar landing.

Resilience launched on January 15, 2025, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center near Titusville, Florida. The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket also carried Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, which took a slightly faster path and successfully touched down on the moon on March 2.

The landing was upright, stable, and within 100 meters of its landing target near Mons Latreille, making Firefly the first commercial company to have its tech successfully touchdown on the moon. Blue Ghost completed its NASA mission on March 16 after dropping off 10 instruments and capturing several photos and videos.

Just a few days later, American-based Intuitive Machines attempted a lunar landing of its own with its Athena spacecraft. However, it ended up sideways and was unable to recharge its solar batteries, resulting in its death. The company’s first lunar lander, Odysseus, met a similar demise in 2024.

Japanese manufacturer ispace is hoping for a more positive turnout. The HAKUTO-R M2 Resilience lunar lander is currently in lunar orbit and is targeting the first week of June to touch down. It is carrying a mini rover with a scoop to take a lunar dirt sample and perform several other experiments. If all goes well, the company will have redeemed itself for a pretty significant mission anomaly in 2023.

The ispace Hakuto-R lander was well on its way to becoming the first privately developed spacecraft to make a controlled landing on the moon when, on April 25, 2023, flight controllers lost contact. Days later, ispace confirmed that it had miscalculated its altitude due to a large cliff and plummeted three miles into the moon’s surface.

FMI: https://ispace-inc.com