Tokyo (EFE).- The Japanese company ispace, which was seeking to have its module Resilience be the first private sector mission from Japan and Asia to land on the Moon’s surface, declared the mission a failure on Friday after it was unable to establish communication with the device hours after the maneuver.
The Resilience module initiated the landing sequence as planned in the early hours of the Japanese morning, but the ground control center was unable to establish communication after this phase.
“At 8:00 local time (23:00 GMT on Thursday) on June 6, 2025, the mission controllers determined that it was unlikely that communication with the landing module would be restored, and therefore it was not possible to complete (the step) Success 9 (the penultimate). We have decided to conclude the mission,” the company said in a statement.
The mission control engineers at the Hakuto-R mission center in Nihombashi, Tokyo, transmitted the orders to execute the landing sequence at 3:13 local time (18:13 GMT on Thursday) and the Resilience initiated the descent phase.
“The module descended from an approximate altitude of 100 kilometers to approximately 20 km, and then successfully ignited its main engine, as planned, to initiate deceleration,” the company detailed how the operation unfolded.
Although it was confirmed that the module’s attitude was almost vertical, telemetry was lost subsequently and no data was received indicating a successful landing.
The Chronology of the Attempted Landing
According to the analysis carried out by the control center with the available data, the laser ranging instrument used to measure the distance to the lunar surface experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values and, as a result, the landing module was unable to decelerate sufficiently to achieve the required speed for the planned landing.
“Based on these circumstances, it is assumed that the landing module probably made a forced landing on the lunar surface,” determined the ispace team, which does not have any further details on the destination and state of the module at the moment.
“Since there are currently no prospects of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to quickly analyze the telemetry data obtained to date and work diligently to identify the cause,” said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, in a statement and in a press conference alongside other mission members visibly affected.
The Resilience was scheduled to land at 4:17 local time on Friday (19:17 GMT on Thursday) and the operation was being broadcast live on the internet and in person at its headquarters in Tokyo and its global subsidiaries, in a broadcast that started filled with optimism after the failure two years ago.
About 20 minutes after the scheduled landing time, one of the people in charge of the transmission indicated that it had not yet been possible to confirm contact with the device, but that the control team would continue to try to communicate with it, and shortly after the live broadcast ended.
The outcome is similar to what happened in April 2023, when the first Hakuto-R mission (this was the second) ended in failure after losing contact moments before landing.
Image credits: Deultimominuto.net
