Private Japanese spacecraft aims to land on the moon

telcodad

Private Japanese spacecraft aims to land in the moon’s ‘Sea of Cold’ this week
Touchdown is scheduled for 3:24 p.m. ET on Thursday (June 5).
By Samantha Mathewson, Space.com - June 2, 2025
https://www.space.com/astronomy/moon/private-japanese-spacecraft-will-attempt-to-land-in-the-moons-sea-of-cold-this-week

The Japanese company ispace is poised to make a historic moon landing this week. The company’s Reslience lunar lander will attempt to touch down in Mare Frigoris (“Sea of Cold”), a basalt plain in the moon’s northern hemisphere, on Thursday (June 5) at 3:24 p.m. EDT (1924 GMT). You’ll be able to watch the landing attempt online via a live webcast on ispace’s YouTube page, beginning about one hour before landing:

Success would be huge for ispace and for Japan, which has just one soft lunar landing on its books to date — that of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s SLIM spacecraft, which touched down just last year. It would also be a big milestone for commercial spaceflight, which has increasingly set its sights on the moon. ….

ALSO:

What time will Japan’s ispace Resilience probe land on the moon on June 5?
The private ispace Resilience lander will land on the moon at 3:24 p.m. EDT on June 5, but only if the company pursues its prime landing spot. Here’s why.
By Tariq Malik, Space.com - June 3, 2025
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/what-time-is-japan-ispace-resilience-moon-landing

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 attempt with 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. ….

Somewhat-Reticent

telcodad midday

Tokyo time?

telcodad

Somewhat-Reticent telcodad midday

Tokyo time?

telcodad The Resilience lander, the second-ever private ispace lunar probe, is on track for a midday landing in the northern reaches of the moon.

Maybe Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC)?: https://broadbandbulletin.com/d/3002-nasa-to-develop-the-first-lunar-time-zone-coordinated-lunar-time-ltc

Rook

I hope they stick the landing.

RayGeode

telcodad Resilience lander will land on the moon at 3:24 p.m. EDT on June 5,

EDT , Eastern Daylight Time?

telcodad

RayGeode telcodad Resilience lander will land on the moon at 3:24 p.m. EDT on June 5,

EDT , Eastern Daylight Time?

Yes, but is 3:24 PM considered midday?

RayGeode

Yes I would consider it mid-day. My day starts at 6 and ends at 9.

telcodad

From Dictionary.com:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/midday

midday

[ noun mid-dey, -dey; adjective mid-dey ]

noun

the middle of the day; noon or the time centering around noon.

telcodad

ispace’s YouTube channel, with coverage currently scheduled to begin at 2:10 PM EDT on June 5th:

ispace SMBC x HAKUTO-R VENTURE MOON: Live Landing Coverage

telcodad

ispace revised the landing time or 3:17 p.m. Eastern June 5, seven minutes earlier than previously announced.:

Second ispace mission ready for lunar landing attempt
By Jeff Foust, Space News - June 4, 2025
https://spacenews.com/second-ispace-mission-ready-for-lunar-landing-attempt/

Japanese company ispace is set to make its second attempt to land on the moon this week as the company looks ahead to larger, more ambitious lunar landers.

The Tokyo-based company slightly revised the landing time for its Resilience lunar lander in a statement late June 3. The landing, in the Mare Frigoris region of the northern hemisphere of the near side of the moon, is now scheduled for 3:17 p.m. Eastern June 5, seven minutes earlier than previously announced.

The tweak in the landing time, ispace said, came after engineers reviewed maneuvers performed May 28 to lower the spacecraft’s orbit to 100 kilometers. “Their review of the orbit, the performance of the spacecraft, and the landing sequence have resulted in an updated landing time,” the company stated.

Rook

Did it land?
The live stream ended before they confirmed if the craft had landed successfully.

broknsymetry

Still no comms. I missed the live view, cooking dinner.

Rook

I feel like I’m trying to see the Northern Lights or something… 😒

telcodad

broknsymetry Still no comms. I missed the live view, cooking dinner.

I missed the live view too, running errands, but the replay doesn’t bode well. 🙁

telcodad

Moon landing attempt by ispace not looking good
By Kelly Kizer Whitt, EarthSky - June 5, 2025
https://earthsky.org/spaceflight/moon-landing-june-5-2025-ispace-resilience-hakuto-r-tenacious-rover/

Update: The moon lander RESILIENCE, part of ispace’s HAKUTO-R mission 2, did not successfully report back to Earth during its attempted landing today. After many stressful minutes of trying to get a signal and verify its position, ispace ended the livestream with no final word on the lander’s fate. Those tracking the radio signal of HAKUTO-R lost the signal about the time the craft was supposed to land. The company will do a news conference soon when it has more information.

telcodad

Resilience spacecraft’s status after moon-landing attempt is unknown
By Jackie Wattles, CNN - Updated 5:13 PM EDT, June 5, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/science/live-news/moon-landing-mission-ispace-06-05-25

Ispace is still trying to make contact with the vehicle, but success looks unlikely.

Ispace just posted an update on social media confirming that the company has not given up hope on the lander.

Ispace also took a few hours to confirm that its last lander failed. Ispace’s CEO previously told CNN that he expected to have contact with the lander at least within the first 10 minutes if everything had gone according to plan.

Sparkchaser

telcodad

Well, crap 🙁

telcodad

From: https://www.cnn.com/science/live-news/moon-landing-mission-ispace-06-05-25

Soft landing on the moon is still really hard. Here’s why
All lunar landing attempts — even missions such as this with no humans on board — bring with them an element of risk and awe.

Success is far from guaranteed. Overall, more than half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure, tough odds for a feat humanity first pulled off nearly 60 years ago.

While technology has advanced in the past five decades, the fundamental challenges of landing on the moon remain the same. Here’s what Resilience has had to overcome — and what it has yet to face.

The sheer distance: It’s roughly a quarter-of-a-million-mile (402,000-kilometer) journey from Earth to the moon. If you could drive a car to the moon at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour (97 kilometers per hour), it would take more than five months. Resilience has also traveled much farther than that because of its “low-energy” approach to arriving at the moon.

The tricky lunar terrain: The moon is covered in dead volcanoes and deep craters, making it difficult to find flat landing zones. Resiliences’ landing spot, Mare Frigoris, is expected to be relatively smooth compared with more challenging lunar locations, such as the south pole.

telcodad

Ispace’s CEO is set to give an update
Ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada, who is currently in Tokyo where Resilience mission control center is located, is set to conduct a news conference at 8 p.m. ET.

The event will be broadcast on YouTube here:

Ispace confirms Resilience mission is over

During a news conference, Ispace executives confirmed they are no longer trying to regain contact with the lander.

“This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to really take it seriously,” Ispace’s CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in translated remarks.

Mission teams will now look to do a thorough review of what went wrong and apply lessons learned to Ispace’s next project, an attempted lunar landing of a craft called Apex 1.0.
:
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is an imaging satellite in orbit around Earth, captured a shot of the first Hakuto-R’s landing site — showing an impact crater that confirmed the vehicle had crashed.

Executives confirmed that they will once again ask NASA if the agency can tune the LRO’s cameras to help confirm what may have happened with Resilience. The spacecraft was expected to land in within a 750-mile-long (1,200-kilometer-long) plain called Mare Frigoris — or the “Sea of Cold.”

telcodad

Resilience likely had a “hard landing”

Resilience had been circling about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the moon in a stable, circular orbit, Ispace confirmed. It then descended successfully to about 20 kilometers (12 miles).

At that point, Resilience “successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration.” It was not clear exactly how the vehicle was oriented, however. Ispace confirmed only that the spacecraft’s orientation was “nearly vertical” before data was lost.

Before landing, Resilience was expected to complete a pitch-over or roll maneuver that would change its position from lying horizontal in relation to the moon’s surface to sitting upright.

But the biggest issue may lie in how Resilience measured its altitude. That sounds similar to why Ispace’s first lander, the Hakuto-R spacecraft that crash landed in 2023, failed. However, executives said the problems appear to be different.

During Ispace’s 2023 failed landing attempt, Hakuto-R’s software wrongly threw out correct altitude data, which led to the failed landing attempt.

During Resilience’s touchdown attempt today, a laser rangefinder — or a sensor designed to measure distance to the moon’s surface — “experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values.” “As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing,” a statement from the company noted. “Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.” That indicates Resilience likely crashed.