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Ispace crashed on the moon in 2023. Its second spacecraft, Resilience, aims in the hours ahead to succeed where its predecessor failed.
June 5, 2025Updated 2:18 p.m. ET
A Japanese company is hoping that the second time’s the charm for putting a robotic lander on the moon.
Ispace of Tokyo is among the private companies that have emerged in recent years aiming to establish a profitable business by sending experiments and other payloads to the surface of the moon.
Its first spacecraft made it to lunar orbit in 2023, but crashed as it attempted to land. Its second spacecraft, named Resilience, launched in January and has been taking a roundabout path to the moon, entering orbit last month.
Resilience is now ready to descend to the lunar surface, and Ispace hopes that it will arrive there intact.
When is the moon landing, and how can I watch it?
Resilience, also known as the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, is scheduled to land at 3:17 p.m. Eastern time Thursday. (It will be Friday at the company’s mission control in Tokyo.)
Ispace is providing live coverage of the landing with English simultaneous translation, which you can watch in the video player embedded above.
