Japan's Private Spacecraft Crashes On Moon; Lunar Mission Declared Failed (Photo on X@ispace_inc)
Tokyo, Japan: Japan’s private company, ispace’s lander, Resilience, has declared that its lunar mission has failed after the country’s first private lunar lander crashed on the moon on Thursday. The spacecraft crashed into the lunar surface while attempting to make a soft touchdown in the Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) region of the moon.
As per reports by multiple media houses, the mishap occurred due to an equipment malfunction as the telemetry from the lander stopped before the scheduled touchdown.
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The company launched the lander aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in January 2025, and spent months traveling on a fuel-efficient trajectory before entering lunar orbit in May. As it began its descent from an altitude of 100 kilometers, telemetry was lost after the craft fired its engines at the 20-kilometer mark, despite initial data indicating a smooth operation.
It is the second attempt by ispace, which earlier faced setbacks in its first lunar landing mission. In April 2023, an attempt by the company failed after the spacecraft went dark, eventually declaring the mission a failure.
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Ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada announced the second mission failure, noting that the reason for the crash landing could be that the lander’s laser rangefinder experienced some sort of delay while measuring the probe’s distance to the lunar surface. While appologising for the failure, he vowed that the company would use the mission to learn about future missions.
Officials from the company claimed that the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing as the result of the delay. Based on the preliminary information, the company assumes that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.
With the hard landing, which means the Resilience hit the moon’s surface faster than planned, the spacecraft is unlikely to have survived in any condition to proceed with its two-week mission.
