ispace's second lunar mission, Resilience, met with failure on June 5th, crashing during its attempted landing on the moon's Mare Frigoris region. The planned landing time was 3:17 p.m. Eastern. The lander was intended to function for approximately two weeks, powered by solar energy.
Initial stages of the landing appeared to proceed as planned. However, telemetry data showed Resilience impacted the surface roughly 1 minute and 45 seconds ahead of schedule, at an excessive speed of 187 kilometers per hour. Telemetry was subsequently lost, leading ispace to conclude that a hard landing had occurred.
“The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar 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,” ispace explained in a statement. This contrasted with the cause of the company’s first mission's failure, attributed to a software malfunction.
“There are different phenomena that we are observing, so we have to look at the root cause in more detail,” said Ryo Ujiie, chief technology officer of ispace. He highlighted the different laser rangefinder design in Resilience compared to the previous mission, due to vendor changes.
Despite the setback, ispace remains committed to future lunar missions. Their U.S. subsidiary is developing Apex 1.0 for a NASA CLPS mission (Mission 3), scheduled for launch in 2027. A separate lander, Series 3, is under development in Japan for Mission 4, also slated for 2027, supported by a substantial government grant. Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, emphasized the difficulty but not impossibility of lunar landings, citing successes by American companies and JAXA.
“The most important thing is to find out the cause for the second failure,” Hakamada stated. “We have to use that to make Mission 3 and Mission 4 a success.” The impact of the Resilience failure on these future missions remains to be seen, but ispace maintains its commitment and competitive advantage in the lunar landing market. Jumpei Nozaki, chief financial officer, noted the limited number of companies capable of developing such landers and the significant demand for their services.