Japan’s private lunar lander, Resilience, has crashed during its second attempt to land on the moon, marking another setback in the commercial race to the lunar surface.
On Friday, communication with the lander was lost just moments before its scheduled touchdown. Tokyo-based company ispace, which operates the mission, declared the mission a failure after hours of silence. Until the final moments, the descent from lunar orbit appeared to be proceeding smoothly.
Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ispace, apologized to all contributors of the mission, acknowledging the second unsuccessful landing attempt. “Engineers did everything they possibly could,” Hakamada said, emphasizing that the company would continue with future lunar missions.
Preliminary analyses suggest that a malfunction in the laser system used to measure the lander’s altitude caused it to descend too rapidly, resulting in a hard landing on the moon’s surface, according to company officials.
Resilience was carrying a mini rover equipped to gather lunar soil and a small red house designed by a Swedish artist for placement on the moon’s surface. The mission aimed to beam back images within hours of landing and deploy the rover over the weekend.
The crash highlights the challenges faced by private companies in lunar exploration. While governments have historically dominated moon missions, private entities have been increasingly venturing into this arena, often with mixed results. Earlier this year, U.S. company Firefly Aerospace successfully landed its Blue Ghost lander on the moon, becoming the first private entity to do so. However, another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, experienced a failure when its lander crashed near the moon’s south pole.
Despite the setback, ispace remains committed to its lunar ambitions, planning a larger lander to launch by 2027 with involvement from NASA.
As the race to the moon intensifies, other companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology aim to land on the lunar surface by the end of the year. Meanwhile, NASA plans to send astronauts around the moon next year, with a crewed lunar landing to follow, and China is preparing for its own astronaut moon landing by 2030.
