Resilience Lunar Lander to Touch Down on Friday
On Friday, iSpace, a Japanese startup, will try to land its unmanned lunar craft, Resilience. At 4:17 a.m. Japan time (1917 GMT Thursday), the landing is scheduled to take place. The event will be live-streamed on the company’s website.
Two years have passed since iSpace’s initial attempt to reach the moon ended in a crash. According to CEO Takeshi Hakamada, the team improved this mission by applying the lessons learnt from the previous one. “We applied the knowledge we acquired from Mission 1 to this expedition. He declared, “Resilience is prepared for a historic moon landing.”
Ispace would become the first private company outside of the United States to land on the moon. Additionally, it would be only the third successful private lunar mission.
Private Space Race Heats Up
Private businesses are now joining the race, even though only five countries—the US, the USSR, China, India, and Japan—have successfully soft-landed spacecraft on the Moon. Compared to government-funded programs, these companies hope to provide more frequent and affordable lunar missions.
Though at an unexpected angle, Houston-based Intuitive Machines made history last year when they made a lunar landing. Their spacecraft managed to pass tests and remained operational in spite of this. Similarly, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which was launched on the same SpaceX rocket as ispace’s Resilience, made a successful landing in March 2025.
Resilience travelled a longer path to the Moon, despite sharing its rocket with Blue Ghost. ispace now aims to mark an important turning point for the private space industry in Japan.
Other Japanese Ventures in Space
In the meantime, Space One, another Japanese business, is also advancing in the aerospace industry. The company has been working towards becoming the first private company in Japan to launch a satellite into orbit. But when the rocket was observed spiralling downward during its most recent attempt in December, the mission was immediately terminated.
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