Ispace’s Resilience Spacecraft Is Set to Land on the Moon Today—Here’s How to Follow Along
The Japanese company’s second attempt at a lunar landing can be streamed live this afternoon
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After a five month journey to the moon, Ispace’s Resilience lander is on track to touchdown on the lunar surface this afternoon.
The Japanese company’s lunar lander took off alongside Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost in January. Blue Ghost took a faster trajectory and made its landing in March, becoming the first commercial spacecraft to land upright on the moon.
This is Ispace’s second lunar landing attempt. The company's first lander crashed into the lunar surface in April 2023 because of a software issue, so this time Ispace is taking things slower. The mission followed what’s called a “low-energy transfer” path to the moon, which added months to its journey.
The company’s executives say that its longer journey had advantages, per Jackie Wattles at CNN. “What is good about this four- or five-month trajectory is, every day, there are small things that happen … something we didn’t expect,” Ispace chief financial officer Jumpei Nozaki told the outlet in January. “This (journey to the moon) is really a learning phase.”
Spending months in transit does cause certain issues, adds CNN. The longer travel time can lead to more wear and tear to the lander and its instruments. Ispace's clients—research groups, companies and governments—would rather see landers make faster journeys.
Ispace is planning for a 3:17 p.m. Eastern landing in Mare Frigoris, a narrow lunar plain on the moon’s northern region. You can follow along on a livestream starting at 2:10 p.m. If things don’t go as planned, fret not. The company has other options planned, though they might delay the landing. "Should conditions change, there are three alternative landing sites that are being considered with different landing dates and times for each," Ispace wrote in a post on social media.
Once it reaches the moon, the instruments aboard Resilience will get to work. The lander is carrying a water electrolyzer experiment, which aims to produce hydrogen and oxygen from the moon’s water molecules; a food production experiment testing ways to grow algae on the moon; a deep space radiation probe; and a rover named Tenacious.
Tenacious is also carrying artwork by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. The work—called Moonhouse—is part of a cultural program for the mission. “It is nothing really on Earth,” Genberg said during a news conference on Wednesday, reports Kenneth Chang for the New York Times. “It is small, and it is really insignificant. But on the moon, it will be a monument. It will be the only colorful thing on the moon.”
Resilience and Tenacious are expected to operate for around two weeks—one lunar day—after which the cold and harsh conditions of the lunar night will cause operations to shut down.
Ispace’s success could “attract attention to the whole Japanese space industry,” said president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Hiroshi Yamakawa last month, reports Kantaro Komiya at Reuters. If Resilience lands upright, it will become the first non-American commercial lander to achieve the feat—stay tuned to see how it goes.