Private ispace Resilience probe will attempt lunar landing this week

A private spacecraft will attempt to land on the moon this week, in what would be the second successful private landing this year and only the third ever. If Japanese space company ispace pulls off the landing, it will also be the first non-US firm to touch down on lunar soil, after its first attempt in 2023 failed.

The company’s Resilience lander started its moon-bound journey on 15 January, when it launched aboard a SpaceX rocket together with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander. While Blue Ghost touched down on 2 March, Resilience took a more circuitous journey to the moon, travelling beyond it into deep space before doubling back and entering lunar orbit on 6 May. This winding path was necessary to land in the hard-to-reach northern plain called Mare Frigoris, which no previous moon mission has explored.

If the probe can complete its complex manoeuvres above the lunar surface, then it should begin its landing sequence at around 7.20pm BST on 5 June and touch down an hour later in Mare Frigoris. The landing attempt will be streamed on ispace’s YouTube channel.

There are six different experiments on board Resilience, including a device that can split water into usable hydrogen and oxygen, a module that can produce food from algae and a deep-space radiation monitor. The lander will also deploy a 5-kilogram rover, called Tenacious, to explore and photograph the lunar surface during a planned two-week mission.

The landing attempt will be ispace’s second attempt at landing on the moon after its first spacecraft, Hakuto-R, crashed into the lunar surface after losing communications. While the company says it has upgraded Resilience with improved sensors based on data it collected from the first mission, it still has a formidable task, as the spacecraft must slow down from hundreds of kilometres per hour to zero in less than 3 minutes. If ispace decides to forgo the landing on 5 June, there are three other backup landing sites, each with different landing dates and slots.