WASHINGTON — Japanese company ispace expects to launch its second lunar lander mission as soon as December, making it one of three companies planning missions to the moon by the end of the year.
During a Sept. 11 press conference, executives with Tokyo-based ispace said their second lunar lander, called Resilience, would launch no earlier than December on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Florida on a flight called Mission 2 by ispace.
The lander, now fully assembled, is completing testing at a facility operated by the Japanese space agency JAXA. It will be shipped to the launch site about a month to a month and a half before launch, said Ryo Ujiie, chief technology officer of ispace.
The company was not more specific about a launch date for the mission. “We have done other environmental testing and so forth and it went very smoothy, but we do have challenges,” he said through an interpreter, offering “50-50” odds of a launch in December. “In preparation for the launch in December, we do have high expectations.”
The Resilience lander is the same HAKUTO-R design as the company’s first lander that crashed attempting a landing on the moon in April 2023. The company concluded that a software glitch prevented the spacecraft from making a safe landing, one linked to a change in landing sites late in the mission’s development.
At the briefing, ispace also announced the landing site for Mission 2: Mare Frigoris, located at 60.5 degrees north and 4.6 degrees west on the near side of the moon. Ujiie said the landing site’s latitude is similar to that for the first lander, so that conditions like lighting will be the same.
The lander is carrying six payloads, led by a “micro rover” called Tenacious developed by ispace’s European subsidiary. The rover includes equipment to scoop a sample of regolith, which ispace will then sell to NASA under a 2020 agreement. Other payloads range from a deep space radiation monitor to water electrolyzer equipment.
The final payload, announced at the briefing, is an art installation: “Moonhouse,” a model house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. The small red house, measuring 11 by 8.6 by 6.4 centimeters, is mounted on the Tenacious rover.
Resilience is just one of three lunar landers proposing to launch late this year or early next year on separate Falcon 9 flights. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander arrived at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for environmental testing in August ahead of a launch the company says is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. Intuitive Machines is also preparing for its second lunar lander mission, called IM-2, set for launch in December or early January.
The missions, though, will take different paths to the moon after launch. IM-2 will follow a direct trajectory, with a landing about a week after launch. Firefly said its Blue Ghost lander would spend a month in Earth orbit before going into lunar orbit for two weeks ahead of a landing attempt.
At the briefing, ispace’s Ujiie said Mission 2 will follow the same low-energy trajectory as the first mission, with a landing four to five months after launch.
