A Second Lunar Landing Failure for ispace

A second attempt by a Japanese company to land on the Moon failed today, two years after the first try.  In a post-landing press conference, the company, ispace, said they have just begun analyzing the data to figure out what happened. Whether there are any similarities to the first failure is yet to be determined.

The SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon spacecraft with the RESILIENCE lander and European-built TENACIOUS rover was launched on January 15, 2025.  Dubbed “Mission 2,” it took the long route to the Moon and entered lunar orbit on May 6 EDT (May 7 JST). For the past month, ispace has been conducting tests and otherwise getting ready for descent today.

The company provided live coverage, but not images of the landing itself. Instead they showed simulations using real-time telemetry from the spacecraft. As landing neared, the simulation showed a sudden drop in altitude while the clock still showed 1:40 before touchdown.

At the post-landing press conference this evening EDT, ispace officials said the last telemetry they received was when the spacecraft was 192 meters (630 feet) above the surface and the speed was faster than expected.

In a statement, ispace said Mission 2 proceeded nominally as it descended from its 100 kilometer (62 miles) orbit around the Moon to 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) when the main engine fired to decelerate.

“While the lander’s attitude was confirmed to be nearly vertical, telemetry was lost thereafter, and no data indicating a successful landing was received, even after the scheduled landing time had passed.”

They are still trying to determine the root cause of the failure, but already know the laser rangefinder, which calculates the distance to the surface, “experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values.”

“As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing. Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.”

The first HAKUTO-R mission in 2023 also failed in the last moments. In that case it was a software error.

Company founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada’s motto is Never Quit the Lunar Quest.  They have two more missions in queue using a larger lander APEX 1.0 that will be able to reach the Moon in one month instead of four and carry several hundred kilograms of payloads. The next launch is currently planned for 2027.

Mission 2 carried six payloads including the TENACIOUS micro-rover built by ispace-Luxembourg. TENACIOUS weighed just 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and was 26 centimeters (10 inches) tall, 31.5 cm (12.4 inches) wide, and 54 cm (21 inches) long.

In addition to TENACIOUS, the spacecraft carried five payloads for commercial customers.

• Water electrolyzer equipment: From Takasago Thermal Engineering Co.
• Food production experiment: A self-contained module from Euglena Co.
• Deep space radiation probe: Developed by the Department of Space Science and Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan
• Commemorative alloy plate: Developed by Bandai Namco Research Institute, Inc. and modeled after “Charter of the Universal Century” from the animation Mobile Suit Gundam UC
• Moonhouse: A model house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg that will be mounted on the rover.

Hakamada said:  “We will strive to restore trust by providing a report of the findings to our shareholders, payload customers, HAKUTO-R partners, government officials, and all supporters of ispace.”

Several countries and companies have been attempting to land on the Moon in recent years with small, comparatively inexpensive landers and/or rovers that are not designed to survive more than one lunar day. When night falls on the Moon and the Sun disappears for 14 Earth days, spacecraft solar arrays cannot recharge batteries and electronics cannot survive the bitter cold temperatures.

India’s space agency, ISRO, and Japan’s space agency, JAXA, successfully landed on the Moon (JAXA’s SLIM even survived the lunar night) but commercial companies have had less success.

Three U.S. companies have tried so far and only one was complete success — Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission-1 earlier this year.  All are supported by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which pays them to deliver NASA payloads to the lunar surface.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine suffered a propulsion failure and did not reach the Moon. Intuitive Machine’s IM-1 and IM-2 both landed, but tipped over. The companies and NASA consider all of them successes because each time they learn lessons and the instruments may have briefly operated enroute to the Moon or on the surface, even if they didn’t achieve their objectives. By that measure, ispace’s two missions also would be successes.