Ispace: Resilience’s failure was due to a hardware issue in laser range finder
In a press conference today, officials of the Japanese startup Ispace explained that the failure of its second lunar lander, Resilience, to land softly on the Moon on June 5, 2025 was due to a hardware issue in its laser range finder that prevented it from providing correct altitude data.
At the same time, they have not yet been able to pin down precisely what caused the failure. It could have been because of unexpected degradation during flight, or possibly a technical fault with the range finder in gathering data at the speeds and altitudes experienced.
The company is forming a task force in partnership with Japan’s space agency JAXA as well as NASA to try to figure out the issue. It is also going to add lidar instrumentation to future missions to provide a backup to the laser range finder. These actions will add about $11 million in additional costs, an amount Ispace says it can absorb.
Ispace is building two more lunar landers, one for NASA in partnership with the American company Draper, and the second for JAXA. It appears both missions are still moving forward.
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In a press conference today, officials of the Japanese startup Ispace explained that the failure of its second lunar lander, Resilience, to land softly on the Moon on June 5, 2025 was due to a hardware issue in its laser range finder that prevented it from providing correct altitude data.
At the same time, they have not yet been able to pin down precisely what caused the failure. It could have been because of unexpected degradation during flight, or possibly a technical fault with the range finder in gathering data at the speeds and altitudes experienced.
The company is forming a task force in partnership with Japan’s space agency JAXA as well as NASA to try to figure out the issue. It is also going to add lidar instrumentation to future missions to provide a backup to the laser range finder. These actions will add about $11 million in additional costs, an amount Ispace says it can absorb.
Ispace is building two more lunar landers, one for NASA in partnership with the American company Draper, and the second for JAXA. It appears both missions are still moving forward.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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I was under the impression that a “laser range finder” is a lidar. So the bit about “adding” lidar is a tad confusing. Perhaps the intent is to a add a second, dissimilar, lidar as a check on the first. My curiosity about the matter, though, does not extend to spending two hours of my remaining life sitting through what is, no doubt, a heavily-accented “English as she is spoke” presser in the very possibly forlorn hope of finding out.
Dick Eagleson,
So the item that stuck out about the laser discussion was their statement “there was not enough power”. Was that the power to the laser, or the emitted beam/return beam was too weak? I think I know why they went with a laser rangefinder, it is lighter. Maybe go with a RADAR next time.
They also mentioned that Hakuto was coming in too fast as well. A bad burn?
I’m about to show my ignorance here. And I fully admit it.
Why would LIDAR add another 11 million? Some basic LIDAR hardware options can’t cost more than a few thousand for earth bound tools. Obviously we need that to be hardened for space use, so let’s multiply that cost by a thousand. That gives us 1-2 million . Then we need coding, testing, etc. I struggle to see this costing more than $5.
Of course govts are involved.. so I should just shut up. :)
Edward KK: The added cost isn’t just adding the new equipment (which is not a trivial act). It also includes the cost of this investigation and the creation of a task force that includes other outside players. Those players have to be paid for their work.
$11 million is actually a very small number, compared to the overages routinely seen in government-run planetary projects.
Jay,
All very on-point questions. More stuff I won’t find out by not watching the presser – and probably would not find out even if I did watch.
The radar suggestion is a good one given that that’s all the Apollo LMs had aboard and all they seemed to need.
Something else of note:–LIDARs on self-driving cars will burn into your cell-phone’s CCD camera-on-chip.
PS…I wonder if the regolith might have a few uber-reflective crystals that can dazzle the LIDAR.
I’m glad that Neil and Buzz didn’t have nor need LIDAR.
The old ways are the best ways.
Jeff Wright
I bet your correct.
Are they even testing this whole system in a vacuum chamber with sim rigolith.?
you’re