WEB DESK: Japanese space startup Ispace launched its second lunar lander, Resilience, early Wednesday in Florida, marking a critical step in the company’s quest to achieve a successful moon landing.
The lander, part of Ispace’s Hakuto-R program, lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just after 1:11 a.m. from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Resilience is expected to land on the moon between late May and early June as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, through which the agency delivers scientific experiments and technology to the lunar surface.
The resilience lander deployed from the rocket at 2:45 a.m., Florida time, meaning that it is officially on its way to the moon. The company’s Mission Control Center crew will attempt to establish a stable connection link to the lander, although this is expected to take some time, as it will orbit the Earth and pass through areas without access to Ispace’s ground station.
Kevin Zaleski, head of global communications at Ispace, described the deployment as a “beautiful sight” and that “the excitement was just contagious,” during a livestream of the deployment.
The launch follows Ispace’s first lunar landing attempt in April 2023, which ended in failure when a software error caused the lander to misjudge its altitude, resulting in a crash from approximately 5 kilometers above the surface of the moon, according to a company postmortem analysis following the accident.
Resilience, which underwent minimal hardware changes from the 2023 version, carries the weight of heightened expectations. A successful landing would make Ispace the first private Asian company to touch down on the moon.
“We just witnessed a truly historical launch,” Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said. “This was the first time that two commercial lunar landers were launched into space at the same time. This shows that the age of the cislunar economy has begun.”
Hakamada added that although the second lunar mission has just begun, his company is already working on several more missions.
“Today is only the beginning … but it is also one of the most exciting moments of every space mission, so I am very happy to be able to share this event,” he said.
The Hakuto-R mission is laden with scientific and cultural payloads, including the microrover Tenacious, which will collect lunar soil for NASA and be the first European rover on the moon. Additional payloads include a lunar water electrolysis device, a module for lunar food production, and a deep-space radiation probe.
Resilience is also carrying a “memory disk” containing the latest register of UNESCO’s Memory of the World program, an initiative that preserves the documentary heritage of humanity, along with a commemorative alloy plate from video game publisher and toymaker Bandai Namco and a small red “Moonhouse” sculpture by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
While Ispace’s team is optimistic, the outcome of the mission remains uncertain.
The Falcon 9 rocket is also carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, which is on a separate trajectory and expected to touch down in March.
