Japanese probe fails to land on moon, moment of loss of contact

The video shows the desperation of the flight controllers when they realize they have lost the probe's telemetry just 1' 45" into the countdown to the planned moon landing .

Japan’s ispace Resilience lander, which attempted to land on the Moon on June 5, 2025 , has lost contact with flight controllers while descending to the lunar surface in Mare Frigoris. This follows the lander’s launch on January 15, 2025 , on a low-fuel trajectory that put it into lunar orbit before attempting to land. The mission, part of the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 program, carried a 5-kg rover, Tenacious, equipped with a shovel to collect lunar regolith and a high-definition camera, as well as a miniature red house made by a Swedish artist.

The lander’s reported silence during its descent left the mission’s outcome uncertain. iSpace flight controllers cut the livestream of the landing after about an hour of descent, unable to confirm whether the lander had landed successfully or had suffered a failure. “We were unable to confirm,” a commentator said in Japanese, adding that mission control “will continue to attempt to communicate with the lander.” This was the case with the 2023 HAKUTO-R Mission 1, which ended in a crash.

The attempt, called Resilience, is named after the first landing that failed, resulting in a crash. The news reflects growing competition in the commercial space sector, with ispace seeking to become the first private Japanese company to achieve a soft landing.