Japan’s ispace Announces Landing Date for Second Hakuto-R Mission

The Japanese commercial lunar lander company ispace announced today that its SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon lander and rover will reach lunar orbit on May 6 and land one month later on June 6 JST (June 5 EDT)).  Venture Moon launched on January 15 on the same Falcon 9 rocket as Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which landed yesterday, but is taking a longer route. This is ispace’s second attempt at a lunar landing after a failure in 2023.

During a press conference this evening (EST), ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada announced the eagerly awaited landing date with a flourish after he and two colleagues provided an extensive update of the spacecraft’s progress since launch. It is now one-third of the way on its journey and five of 10 milestones have been successfully met.

The company added in a press release that the date and time could change if one of three alternative landing sites is selected instead. The landing window is open from June 6-8.

The mission is taking the RESILIENCE lander and TENACIOUS rover to the center of Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) at 60.5 degrees north, 4.6 degrees west. The lander is 2.5 meters (8 feet) wide and 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) high. TENACIOUS is quite small, weighing just 5 kilograms (11 pounds). It’s 26 centimeters (10  inches) tall, 31.5 cm (12.4 inches) wide, and 54 cm (21 inches) long.

A looping low-energy trajectory was chosen to reduce the amount of fuel needed and maximize the amount of payload they could carry. It uses the gravitational pull of the Earth and Moon to help it on its way.

Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie called it a “strategic decision” to meet customer demand, but added that future missions will be more capable and take a shorter route.  In addition to TENACIOUS, Venture Moon is delivering five customer payloads. TENACIOUS itself will collect lunar samples under a mission authorization license from Luxembourg and ownership of the samples (not the samples themselves) will be transferred to NASA under a 2020 contract.

As it headed away, RESILIENCE took a last look at Earth.

The spacecraft made a flyby of the Moon on February 15, but now is moving away and won’t return until May 6 when it enters lunar orbit.

Mission 2 Milestone Success 5 ✅????

The RESILIENCE lunar lander successfully completed a flyby of the Moon on Feb. 15, 2025, coming within approximately 8,400 km of the lunar surface–a historic first of its type for a Japanese private, commercial lunar lander.

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— ispace (@ispace_inc) February 15, 2025

RESILIENCE will spend the month after that gradually lowering itself into a 100 kilometer orbit before beginning its descent to the surface. That final phase will take about 90 minutes.

ispace’s first mission, HAKUTO-R M1, did quite well until the last few moments of descent on April 25, 2023 EDT. A software error told the lander’s automated systems it was on the surface when it was still at 5 kilometers altitude and it crashed.

Hakamada was and is undeterred. He insists failure is a way to learn. During a pre-launch briefing on January 8 EST, he said he hopes this second mission will “convey to everyone across Japan the importance of perseverance and embracing challenges.” The company’s motto is “Never Quit the Lunar Quest.”

HAKUTO means white rabbit in Japanese.