Japanese company aborts Resilience probe mission after failed moon landing

Officials at iSpace, the private Japanese company attempting to land a probe on the Moon, announced the end of the mission on Friday after losing contact with the Resilience spacecraft during the descent phase.

The craft was scheduled to land around 7:17 p.m. GMT on Thursday. But commentators on the live broadcast said about 15 minutes after the theoretical landing that they were "not in a position to confirm" its success.

"Resilience left lunar orbit to begin its descent, dropping from an altitude of about 100 km to about 20 km, and then ramped up its engine to reduce speed," ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada explained at a press conference.

"We have confirmed that the position of the lunar lander shifted to a near-vertical position. Telemetry was then lost, and after the scheduled landing time, we have not been able to receive data confirming its landing," he added.

According to the executive, it is very likely that the probe suffered an "abrupt" landing.

"Following the loss of communication, we attempted to restart the module, but were unable to reestablish communication. Therefore, we have decided to terminate the mission," he stated.

Two years ago, the company had already made a first attempt that ended in an accident.

Select Club

Moon landing maneuvers are very complex, especially due to the lack of atmosphere, which makes parachutes ineffective.

The devices must make their descent with the help of propellants, and all with great precision.

"We are confident in our preparations," Hakamada said last week, asserting that iSpace had "drawn on the experience gained from Mission 1 and the current trip to the Moon."

To date, only two American companies, Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace, have successfully landed spacecraft on the lunar surface without causing them to explode, although two of the three landings failed to land correctly, which affected their subsequent operation.

Before them, only a handful of countries, starting with the Soviet Union in 1966, had achieved this feat. In January 2024, Japan joined the select club by successfully landing a spacecraft from its local space agency on the moon.

The Resilience probe was launched in January from the United States along with the American Blue Ghost space robot from Firefly Aerospace, but the two devices did not follow the same trajectory.

Therefore, it didn't take them that long to reach Earth's natural satellite. Blue Ghost landed safely in early March.

The Japanese probe carried, among other things, a rover, scientific instruments developed by other companies, and a "Moonhouse," a model home designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.

Also a water electrolyzer to separate molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, a food production experiment, and a deep space radiation probe.

The mission also aimed to collect two lunar soil samples and sell them to the US space agency NASA for $5,000.