Japan-based ispace makes second Moon landing attempt

Japan-based ispace makes second Moon landing attempt

For the third time in 2025, a robotic lander is aiming for a touchdown on the surface of the moon. In February, Intuitive Machines Nova Sea lander took the fastest route, landing in less than a week, but ending up on its side. Then in early March, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lunar lander touched down after traveling in space for nearly 2 months. And next up on June 5th, Japan-based company will attempt to land its robotic lander on the moon. The mission is dubbed the SMBC by Hakoto R Venture Moon Mission 2. It’s a partnership primarily between Japanese companies iSpace Incorporated and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. Its lander called Resilience is aiming for a part of the moon in the northern hemisphere called Marrigorus. That’s Latin for sea of cold. It’s located at approximately 60.5° north, 4.6° west on the Earthfacing side of the moon. The volcanic region was imaged ahead of the landing attempt by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Mission 2 is a second bite at the apple for ice after its first Hakoto R mission had a hard landing back in 2023 and wasn’t able to return any science data. Before the launch of mission 2, we sat down with Ron Garin, the CEO of Icepace’s US division, who explained why mission one didn’t go to plan. Yeah. Well, the good news is um the hardware worked exactly as we expected. So there was no real hardware issues to speak of. Um what had happened on our first mission is as we were getting ready to land on the lunar surface, you know, and everybody’s in mission control room, everybody’s excited. We actually the plan was to land in the bottom of a deep crater and as we passed the rim of the crater, the radar altimeter all of a sudden saw a huge jump in the altitude. So the cliff, it was a very steep cliff about 5 km deep. Um, so we’re talking really deep. But as we crossed that that rim, uh, and the altimeter, the radar alimter showed this big jump, the software kicked it out, right? It said, “Okay, that’s impossible. You can’t have a 5,000, you know, meter, um, jump like that.” Uh, and so that was the truth data. Um, and so what we end up doing is, uh, ignoring that altitude and then making a pinpoint soft landing 5,000 ft above the bottom of the crater or 5,000 mters above the the bottom of the crater roughly. Um, and then just hovering there until the spacecraft ran out of fuel, right? And so, um, we’ve obviously fixed all all that software. We’re not landing in the bottom of a deep crater, uh, this time. And so our our confidence level is a lot higher on this one. Icepace’s journey of roughly 4.5 months is coming to a conclusion soon. It began with the launch of the Resilience Lander back on January 15th. Ignition and lift off. Go Firefly, go ice, go alongside Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander. After Blue Ghost was deployed, upper MPC separation confirmed. A protective canister was jettisoned about an hour and 12 minutes after liftoff. Roughly 20 minutes after that, ice resilience separation confirmed. Resilience was on its way. Following its long coast, as illustrated on this map that represents the mission trajectory, the spacecraft entered into lunar orbit at 2041 UTC on May 6th with the completion of its roughly 9-minute trans lunar injection burn. Garin said ice was very intentional when choosing a coast phase lasting more than a third of the year. What the low energy transfer uh allows is us to trade fuel for payload capacity margin. It just uh leads to uh more capability for us um to to bring to to the lunar surface. The big finale is coming up on June 5th at 1917 UTC when resilience is expected to land safely on the moon. There’s a lot of pucker points to use your to use your phrase. Uh, but the the probably the biggest pucker point is that that final descent to the lunar surface. Um, because that’s that’s pretty tricky and there’s a lot of hazards on the moon and a lot of things to watch out for. Ice Bas’s Resilience Lander has a square base of roughly 2.5x 2.5 m or 8.2x 8.2 ft and is about 2.3 m or 7.5 ft tall. It has a dry mass of 340 kg or roughly 750 lb. It’ll use its one main thruster along with six assisting thrusters to make the touchdown. The main thruster was installed back in late 2023. The Resilience Lander carries with it a suite of five primary customer payloads. There are three science-driven payloads, a deep space radiation probe from the Department of Space Science and Engineering at the National Central University in Taiwan, a food production experiment called Luna Glenna from the Uglennena Company and an electrolysis demonstration from Takasago Thermal Engineering. And then there are more artistic payloads. One is a commemorative alloy plate from the Bandai Namco Research Institute, which is the R&D arm of the Japanese entertainment company. It’s inscribed with a message modeled after a piece of lore from its anime series called Mobile Soup Gundam. You see, the other comes from Swedish artist Michael Jenberg, who is sending a model of a traditional Swedish cottage known as the Moon House. It’s an art installation he’s dreamt of putting on the moon for a quarter century. It’s it’s really it’s really difficult to know. Um maybe it will feel really empty that it it is um the project is ending or maybe it will um maybe it will I kind I think that it might depend on the reactions of others um and so far the react I mean people do get provoked by it of course as well I mean that’s natural but that’s also that’s also kind of the purpose of art. Yeah. I mean, you you need you want people to get uh emotionally involved and somebody gets annoyed and think that that’s rubbish and some people get really inspired by it and and that is the purpose. And if that can continue at least for a while, I would be I would be super happy about that. It’s it’s really important to reach not just the the brain but the heart as well and folks and I think you know as we communicate to folks through different channels not just technical channels but you know emotional channels as well hopefully we’ll get more people behind the effort and behind what we’re trying to do and what the other companies that are in the same industry are trying to do to to basically extend a human presence to the moon for for you know this time to stay. Icepace itself also has a payload on the lander in the form of this shoe box-sized micro rover called Tenacious. It was manufactured by Icepace Europe in Luxembourg. We are flying the European rover from Icepace Europe on this mission and so it’s really exciting. Uh first time it’s flown uh and we do have experiments on the rover. Tenacious measures 26 cm tall, 31.5 cm wide and 54 cm long. converted to the Imperial system here in the US. That’s about 10.2 in tall, 12.4 in wide, and 21.3 in long. Its frame is made up of a carbon reinforced plastic, and it has wheels designed to handle the challenging terrain on the moon. It also has a forward- mounted HD camera to capture the lunar landscape as well as the Swedish house, which will hitch a ride on board. As soon as they have commissioned their done all their commissioning, all their tests, it should be the moonhouse uh time. Uh and then what what it starts with it will start scouting for a good place. As you saw in the previous picture, it’s it’s uh we we want to have a good geometry. We want to make sure we have the perfect lighting from the sun. Uh if we can have the moon, the earth in the background, that would be fantastic. That may be difficult. Uh, and of course it would be nice to have a good scene on the moon, have the right side size rocks or maybe a hill as it was on the picture there. And once we’ve selected this, we’ll go a long tour around to place as you see the house is mounted on the back side. So in order to get a picture that is in the light side, we need to have face the sun as it is here and then go back around so we don’t get any tracks in front of the house after we deploy the house of course and then we’ll go back to a couple of or three camera angles and take the pictures. It’s a really exciting artistic uh endeavor as well. So technically the first housing development on the moon that’s that’s designed to say there. That’s right. For very very small people. Exactly. Following the landing sequence, Garin says Icepace will conduct some quick checkouts to make full use of all the time they have during the lunar daytime. There’s safing that has to occur on the spacecraft, right, to be good stewards of of the the lunar environment. Um, and then obviously payload checkouts and and so we are it’s going to happen very rapidly. We the the clock is ticking uh because we’re only going to be operate operating during daytime. Uh so if we get there perfectly then that’s around 14 days uh of operations. We have a lot to do in 14 days and so we want to get going as as fast as we can. Like the commercial landers before it resilience isn’t designed to survive the lunar night. That’s a problem space is working on across its Japan and United States divisions. Really in order to have sustainable operations on the moon to to to start a cisinary economy you have to be able to survive in the night. So there’s, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars that are put into these missions and if they only operate for two weeks, that’s not a very good return on investment, right? So we we want to be able to do surface operations for for months or years at a time. And so in in order to do that, you have to you have to be able to survive the night. And that al centers on being able to heat your equipment to to make sure that when you get into the really really low temperatures of of lunar night uh that you’re not going to destroy all your electronics and all your equipment. Most recently in late April, Icepace announced a memorandum of understanding with Entex Limited, an Australian nuclear engineering company to develop a technology demonstration of ENTX’s radioisotope heating unit for a future ice mission. Similarly, earlier that month, the United States Division of Icepace announced a separate with Xeno Power Systems, Inc. to conduct a demonstration mission as soon as 2027 with Xenopowers radioisotope power systems. Xenopower has done a lot of great work on the regulatory side to enable them to actually fly these um you know nuclear fuel sources uh both you know from LEO to Sislinger space. Um and so they’re they’re working very diligently on enabling the the regulatory front. Um and so our collaboration uh in the near term will be understanding how do we actually deploy these systems um and enable uh a very massefficient uh power enabler for the surface. This second mission from space will also help plant the seeds for a future largescale off-world economy. Once on the moon, ice will execute a pair of contracts between itself and NASA. We are going to capture a regalith in the foot pads of the lander and we have a scoop uh that was actually designed by a mining company. So so interindustry collaboration that will actually scoop up uh a portion of regalith and then we will do a transfer u contractual transfer to NASA for ownership of that of that sample. What do you think that you know this first overture in in transferring property on another celestial body will teach you know ice space teach NASA about how the you know the true economy of the moon you know not just getting things to the moon but within the the system or space what that means and how that works. Yeah, I think this is really important. It’s it’s a it’s a legal demonstration, right? Right. I mean it’s a technical demonstration but it’s also a legal demonstration uh which hopefully sets precedent um that uh will will lead to the development of a cis lunar economy lead to the development of uh a market a commercial market on the lunar surface as companies realize oh we could there’s there’s um revenue to be generated here and uh hopefully that leads to a permanent significant human presence on the moon. Icepace is just one company hoping to see a cis lunar economy realized. But even before the US administration proposed heavily slashing NASA’s budget, Garin had his concerns when it came to how strongly committed the US would be towards a permanent human presence on the moon. Garin knows a thing or two about America’s space program. He’s a former NASA astronaut who started his training back in August of 2000. He flew to the space station twice. Once as mission specialist 2 on STS 124 in 2008 and again in April 2011 as a member of expedition 27/28. In all, he’s racked up more than 178 days in space and amassed just over 27 hours of spacew walking time across four EVAs. The biggest problem that in particular the US space program has is a tendency to shift strategy administration to administration. With the exception of the the last you know couple of administrations which were were outliers we we’ve stayed the co the course stayed the course to the moon right and uh there is a strong political um imperative to get back to the moon. Uh hopefully that imperative extends to and stay. The and stay part is is the is the tricky part. Um I agree with the folks who who think um our next step is return to the moon. Uh but a sustainable exploration of the moon, I think if we do that and we do it right, that will open up exploration for the rest of the solar system, including Mars. Uh it also is a way for us to test out everything that’s you know in in our close at our closest neighbor you know 3 days away uh versus you know months and months away u for instance. Um there’s the list goes on and on why it just makes so much more sense to to really set up the infrastructure on the moon uh before we make any really uh huge significant investments um in especially for human exploration uh any anywhere else. um and um that doesn’t really answer your question because I don’t know if uh Congress, Senate, the administration is going to is going to share on that and where the political winds are going to blow. While the world waits for an answer to that question, Garin says Ice will have a busy 2025 even after mission 2 is done and dusted. However that ends up turning out, the first lander produced by Icepace US will continue development in partnership with the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory as part of NASA’s commercial lunar payload services program, also referred to as clips. But in early May, iSpace announced a delay in the launch of the Apex 1 lander for that mission from 2026 to 2027. That’s because they’re moving away from using Agile Spac’s A2200 bypro engine to instead using a new engine called VoidRunner, which is being jointly developed by iSpaceUS and Agile Space. The change will require adjustments to the lander’s design from what they’ve shared previously, hence the one-year delay. Garin calls the Apex 1.0 lander a quotequantum leap from the Resilience Lander. So um the just to uh illustrate that the the payload capacity of the resilience lander is about 30 kilograms to the lunar surface. The payload capacity of the Apex 1.0 is about 300 kg to the lunar surface. We also have the capability to deploy relay satellites along the way. And so our first mission um which is in partnership with Draper Laboratories is a clips mission. We’re landing in the Schrodener basin on the far side of the moon on the south pole on our first orbit. I mean our first mission and uh we will uh deploy two or polar orbiting lunar polar orbiting relay satellites on the way in. Um and then like I said capability to bring 300 kgs to the lunar surface with rovers and and um a lot of other really exciting things. So very very uh challenging mission for the first mission of of Apex 1.0 first mission of ice. uh that will be followed shortly thereafter by another uh mission from Japan with the new lander. So we are developing the follow on to the resilience lander which has more capability u comparable to the apex 1.0 lander. Uh our rover development will continue throughout that period and so we want a steady cadence of of lunar missions um so that you know everything isn’t happening in parallel. But with mission two about to reach its own apex, Garin says he can picture what that moment of reaching a successful touchdown will be like. We have a like an all hands room in space US and in big letters across the wall is other words touchdown confirmed exclamation point. And so um that is the vision that we are projecting. Um you know the positive v visualizing a positive future but I I think it’s going to be an incredibly emotional experience. I think everybody is going to feel a sense of of pride and relief and um that they they accomplished something really remarkable uh which we will have accomplished something really remarkable if if that telemetry comes across the screens. So reporting for spaceflight now I’m Will Robinson Smith.

Japan-based company ispace is making its second attempt to land on the surface of the Moon. It’s targeting a region in the northwest part of the Earth-facing side called ‘Mare Frigoris’ or ‘Sea of Cold.’

The company’s previous mission, HAKUTO-R, tried and failed to complete a soft touchdown on the lunar surface back in 2023. A software issue connected to the robotic lander’s altimeter caused it to misjudge its positing relative to the surface and it crash landed in a deep crater.

This go around, the roughly 7.5-foot-tall lander named Resilience will try to succeed where its predecessor failed and pave the way for a series of robotic landings for ispace as it begins to build its part of a larger cislunar economy.

Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
01:03 – Where HAKUTO-R Mission 1 went wrong
02:41 – Mission 2 begins
04:14 – Resilience lander
04:41 – Payloads
05:22 – The Moonhouse and Tenacious
09:02 – Mission on the Moon
09:39 – Learning to survive the lunar night
11:25 – Building a cislunar economy
15:11 – Apex 1.0 and ispace-U.S.
16:57 – Mission 2 and beyond

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