Japanese company ispace's Resilience lander will attempt to touch down on the moon. "The solar-powered lander carried five ...

The spacecraft's laser range finder, or LRF, experienced an anomaly that prevented Resilience from obtaining valid measurements of its distance from the lunar surface.

Currently, ispace's Resilience moon lander is scheduled to land on Thursday, June 5, at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT), though it will be 4:17 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Friday, June 6, at touchdown time.

A laser navigating tool doomed a Japanese company’s lunar lander earlier this month, causing it to crash into the moon.

Resilience is ispace's second lunar lander and has been on a long, circuitous route to the moon after launch on Jan. 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

ISpace's private Resilience Lander will attempt to touch down on the Mare Frigoris region of the moon's surface on June 5, at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT).

Whether Resilience lands safely or not, ispace is forging ahead. Its next mission, set for 2026, will debut a larger lander, Apex 1.0, aimed at expanding Japan's role in the growing lunar economy.

Even before Resilience’s landing attempt, ispace-U.S. incorporated lessons learned from ispace-Japan’s first mission in 2023. ispace-U.S.’s next generation lander, called APEX-1.0 builds ...

An ispace engineer in the mission control room clasps his hands awaiting confirmation from the Resilience lander as CEO Takeshi Hakamada looks on in the bottom right inset photo.

Japan-based company Ispace will attempt to safely land its Resilience spacecraft on the moon this week after the lunar lander spent months in orbit.

An illustration of ispace's Resilience lander. ispace Following its failed attempt to achieve a successful landing on the moon in 2023, there were high hopes that Japanese startup ispace would ...

Resilience was descending at a rapid rate of 138 feet (42 meters) per second when contact was lost, and crashed five seconds later, they said. Bad software caused ispace's first lunar lander to ...