Hardware Failure Doomed ispace’s Mission 2

Japanese lunar lander company ispace has determined that their second mission to the Moon crashed because of a hardware failure in the Laser Rangefinder that should have told the spacecraft how close it was to the ground. They already are working on their two next missions and do not anticipate schedule delays, but the cost will go up by about $10 million to make the landing system more robust and allow for more testing.

The failure of ispace’s SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon mission with the RESILIENCE lander and TENACIOUS micro-rover on June 5 EDT (June 6 in Japan) was the company’s second mishap in a row. HAKUTO-R Mission 1 (M1) crashed into the Moon in 2023 also because the lander didn’t have proper measurements about its altitude, but ispace is stressing that was due to a software failure.

During a press conference this evening EDT (June 24 in Japan), company officials emphasized that while superficially it might seem Mission 2 suffered the same fate, in this case it was hardware. The software fixes they made after Mission 1 were successful.

They’re still not sure exactly what the hardware failure was, however, and will soon establish a third-party review team to help them figure it out.  They’ve narrowed it down to four possible factors.

The company’s motto is Never Quit the Lunar Quest and they made clear they are pressing forward with development of the next two missions, highlighting all they achieved even if a soft landing eluded them both times. They plan to seek additional technical advice from JAXA for that phase. JAXA placed the Small Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on the lunar surface in 2024. SLIM had its own challenges, losing an engine and landing upside down, but it operated beyond its expected lifetime.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) located the Mission 2 crash site at 60.44N, 4.6W, very close to the intended target.

Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie pointed out the close proximity validated their guidance, navigation and control system. He cited that as just one of several achievements in these first two missions. Others are getting both spacecraft into lunar orbit, acquiring landing sequence data, and reducing costs and development time between Mission 1 and Mission 2.

The next two missions will use a larger lander, Apex 1.0.  Mission 3 actually will deliver payloads to the Moon for NASA as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.  ispace’s Denver-based U.S. subsidiary ispace-U.S. is a subcontractor to Draper on CLPS task order CP-12 that will land at Schrödinger basin on the far side of the Moon. The launch date recently slipped from 2026 to 2027 and ispace said tonight they intend to meet that date. They estimate they need an additional 1.5 billion yen (about $10 million) to make the landing system sensors more robust and for additional testing. Company founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said they are receiving messages of encouragement from their customers.