Ispace confirms that its Resilience lunar lander has failed, apparently crashing on the Moon
According to an update issued several hours after the planned landing, the Japanese lunar lander startup confirmed that its Resilience lunar lander apparently crashed in its attempt to soft land on the Moon.
Ispace engineers at the HAKUTO-R Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, transmitted commands to execute the landing sequence at 3:13 a.m. on June 6, 2025. The RESILIENCE lander then began the descent phase. The lander descended from an altitude of approximately 100 km to approximately 20 km, and then successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration. 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.
Based on the currently available data, the Mission Control Center has been able to confirm the following: The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar 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.
After communication with the lander was lost, a command was sent to reboot the lander, but communication was unable to be re-established.
This explanation fits with the very high velocity numbers seen as the spacecraft approached the surface, much higher than intended.
Ispace has now attempted to land on the Moon twice, with both landers crashing upon approach. In this sense its record is not quite as good as the American startup Intuitive Machines, which had two landers touch down but immediately tip over, causing both to fail.
Ispace presently has three contracts to build landers with NASA, JAXA (Japan’s space agency), and the European Space Agency. The American lander is being built in partnership with the company Draper. Whether this second failure today will impact any of those contracts is uncertain at this time.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
According to an update issued several hours after the planned landing, the Japanese lunar lander startup confirmed that its Resilience lunar lander apparently crashed in its attempt to soft land on the Moon.
Ispace engineers at the HAKUTO-R Mission Control Center in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, transmitted commands to execute the landing sequence at 3:13 a.m. on June 6, 2025. The RESILIENCE lander then began the descent phase. The lander descended from an altitude of approximately 100 km to approximately 20 km, and then successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration. 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.
Based on the currently available data, the Mission Control Center has been able to confirm the following: The laser rangefinder used to measure the distance to the lunar 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.
After communication with the lander was lost, a command was sent to reboot the lander, but communication was unable to be re-established.
This explanation fits with the very high velocity numbers seen as the spacecraft approached the surface, much higher than intended.
Ispace has now attempted to land on the Moon twice, with both landers crashing upon approach. In this sense its record is not quite as good as the American startup Intuitive Machines, which had two landers touch down but immediately tip over, causing both to fail.
Ispace presently has three contracts to build landers with NASA, JAXA (Japan’s space agency), and the European Space Agency. The American lander is being built in partnership with the company Draper. Whether this second failure today will impact any of those contracts is uncertain at this time.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
P. T. Barnum to the courtesy phone please. P. T. Barnum…
Happy to know that Lunar Lander games did not guarantee lunar lander success. The first computer game I ever played was a teletype text based Lunar Lander game, speed and height were reported and thrust was input.
They got better: https://www.pcmag.com/news/50-years-on-the-moon-the-evolution-of-lunar-lander-games but apparently there is a difference between gaming and practice.
I have a lot of respect for those Apollo studs. They nailed the landing first time every time. My vacuum cleaner has more computer power than their lunar lander.
Yet another reminder that landing a robot on another world is actually kinda hard.
Tell you what, though, Resilience sent back some awesome imagery from orbit.
JS says: “I have a lot of respect for those Apollo studs. They nailed the landing first time every time.”
Correct on Apollo, though they learned a lot from the Rangers, Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters they splattered on the moon for years before Apollo 10. Rangers were intended to impact. Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters weren’t, though some did. Appears some of those lessons didn’t make it thru the 60 years to today.
OTOH, one of the things about new commercial space is learning how to break stuff before learning how not to. Of course, you have the other constraint of trying not to run out of $$$ during that process. Cheers –
agimarc: You are wrong about both the Surveyors and Lunar Orbiters. NASA built seven Surveyors, and six successfully landed, including the first.
All five Lunar Orbiters reached the Moon and operated in orbit, as expected.
None used laser altimeters. All were built with slide rules.
Surveyor 2 and Surveyor 4 both crashed. But the other five landed successfully. No laser altimeters, just doppler radars!
Pretty good success ratio for that point in history. Heck, it would be a ratio that NASA would be delighted to get from its CLPS landers now!
Are they using LASER vs RADAR try and save weight? Maybe there is something about the regolith that beguiles the LASER system within a certain distance.
I cannot find details on what Bue Ghost used.
Mr. Street the Apollo record was a close run thing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 skated awful close to disaster because Armstrong had to bypass the initial landing site which had large boulders not seen in the survey shots. And Apollo 13 didn’t even get to try and got it’s crew home by the skin of their teeth. And of course there was the tragic fire of Apollo 1 during a rehearsal/test.
Apollo was impressive, but things could have easily gone MUCH worse.
Tregonsee314
Pretty sure J.S. was referring to the six landers that actually descended to and landed on the surface under manual control.
Apollo 10 does not count, as they deliberately aborted at altitude above the surface.
From the linked press release:
Why the delays? Could it be that the computers have been made with such complex software that data is not processed fast enough? Astonishing simplicity was required on the 1960s spacecraft, but these days everyone is comfortable using huge operating systems and massive (figuratively) software that takes simple tasks and makes them complex.
I think they need at least 3 laser range finders, as they are critical to the landing process. Also, Neil Armstrong said it took all of his piloting skills to safely land Eagle on the moon. This from a man who also flew the X-15, among other craft! It‘s not easy!
Scott Manley has a video on this failure. He thinks that the problem may be the last minute turnover of the lander to vertical, and the lidar not giving accurate distance information early enough in the landing phase for the spacecraft to slow down enough to land softly.
He also answers the question as to why we are having so many landing failures:
“Why does it seem so much harder to land on the moon today compared to 50 years ago?”
His answers (paraphrased): 1. They are choosing a much harder way to land, in the old days they come straight down, but that meant that they needed more propellant to counter lunar gravity, and the engines had to be larger.
2. The trajectories needed for the orbits to the moon also required the rockets to throw the spacecraft much faster, meaning a more expensive launch vehicle.
3. AThe old spacecraft only needed to cary a small payload, a camera, but today they are trying to put a lot more payload on the landers.
My thoughts about the unmanned landers vs Apollo is that each of the Apollos that landed were manually landed, not by the preprogramed computer. Similar to David M. Cook’s comment, the astronauts avoided hazardous conditions at their landing sites, but today’s unmanned landers are having difficulties identifying hazards. One landed within a crater.