Ispace’s Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon Has Concluded After Contact with Resilience Lost
Ispace announced last night that its lunar landing attempt concluded upon losing communications with the RESILIENCE lunar lander.
(Minato, Tokyo) Japanese lunar exploration company Ispace, Inc. (9348.T) announced last night the conclusion of its Mission 2 SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon after losing contact with its RESILIENCE lunar lander.
Rendering of Ispace’s Resilience lunar lander orbiting the moon courtesy of Ispace.
As of 8am JST on June 6th (7pm EST on June 5 / 23.00 GMT on June 5), Ispace announced in a status update on its website that mission controllers had determined that it was unlikely that communication with the lander would be restored and therefore completing Success 9 was not achievable – the mission was therefore concluded.
Last night’s attempt marks iSpace’s second lunar landing attempt, after its Hakuto-R Mission 1 launched in December 2022 and failed to land – instead, crashing – in April of 2024.
According to CNN, Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada compared Ispace to SpaceX, saying: “SpaceX has also failed several times, but now SpaceX occupies the launching market.”
The company is working with US-based company Draper, which has its roots in NASA’s Apollo program, on a lander called Apex 1.0 — that vehicle is slated to travel to the far side of the moon as soon as 2027, according to CNN.
Per CNN, Hakamada said during the news briefing he will need to work to regain the trust of investors, and the company will need to deeply investigate what went wrong on the Resilience mission to ensure similar issues don’t plague Apex 1.0.
“This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to really take it seriously,” Hakamada said in translated remarks, according to CNN.
