Japanese space company ispace has a mission that has slowly made its way to lunar space, and in the coming weeks will attempt to land on the Moon. There’s a crucial event ahead of that, and it is getting into lunar orbit. That will happen today, May 7, 2025.
This is the second time the company is attempting a moon landing. The first attempt in 2023 ended with a crash-landing, likely due to a loss of propellant in the final stage, meaning the Hakuto-R Mission 1 slammed hard on the lunar surface.
Moon-landing is difficult, as we have seen in the last few years with a few missions soft landing on their sides, like fellow Japanese mission SLIM. The hope for the Hakuto-R Mission 2, also known as RESILIENCE, is that everything goes smoothly from now onwards.
The lander carries multiple pieces of equipment including a water electrolyzer, a food production experiment, and a deep radiation probe. It also carries a memory disk developed together with UNESCO that contains 275 languages and other cultural artifacts. For the anime fans, the company collaborated with Bandai Namco Research Institute to make a commemorative alloy plate modeled after Gundam‘s “Charter of the Universal Century.”
There is also a special art piece called Moonhouse that is traveling on RESILIENCE. It will be placed on the surface by lunar rover TENACIOUS, once the robot is allowed to roam the surface. The rover will analyze the regolith, the lunar soil.
“After successfully completing a lunar flyby and spending approximately two months smoothly navigating through space along with low-energy transfer orbit as we planned, the RESILIENCE lander has now completed all scheduled orbital control maneuvers,” Takeshi Hakamada, Founder & CEO of ispace, said in a statement. “We are fully prepared to begin its final approach to the Moon. Over the next month and a half leading up to the landing, we will remain focused and dedicated to meeting the expectations of all those supporting us.”
RESILIENCE was launched on January 15, together with Blue Ghost Mission 1, a lunar mission that successfully landed on the Moon on March 2. The difference in timings is due to the difference in approaches to getting to the Moon, with ispace favoring a low-energy transfer that took the mission almost three times as far as the Moon is from Earth.
The company aims to land RESILIENCE in the northern region of Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) no earlier than June 6.
Source Link: Japan’s RESILIENCE Lander Will Enter Lunar Orbit Today
