Japan's private Resilience lunar lander arrived in orbit around the moon on Tuesday (May 6), a month ahead of its planned ...

Tokyo-based company ispace's Resilience lunar lander will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Wednesday (Jan. 15). Here's what the spacecraft is carrying.

ISpace's private Resilience Lander will attempt to touch down on the Mare Frigoris region of the moon 's surface on June 5, at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1817 GMT). While you won’t be able to see the lander ...

Whether Resilience lands safely or not, ispace is forging ahead. Its next mission, set for 2026, will debut a larger lander, Apex 1.0, aimed at expanding Japan's role in the growing lunar economy.

UPDATE: Jun. 6, 2025, 10:21 a.m. EDT Executives at ispace have called the mission off, stating it was unlikely they would be able to restore contact with the Resilience lander.

Whether Resilience lands safely or not, ispace is forging ahead. Its next mission, set for 2026, will debut a larger lander, Apex 1.0, aimed at expanding Japan's role in the growing lunar economy.

Currently, ispace's Resilience moon lander is scheduled to land on Thursday, June 5, at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT), though it will be 4:17 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Friday, June 6, at touchdown time.

An ispace engineer in the mission control room clasps his hands awaiting confirmation from the Resilience lander as CEO Takeshi Hakamada looks on in the bottom right inset photo on June 5, 2025.

Such a gradual approach to the moon does not, however, guarantee landing success. Ispace’s first attempt to put a spacecraft on the lunar surface ended with a crash landing in April 2023 after a 4 ...

Even before Resilience’s landing attempt, ispace-U.S. incorporated lessons learned from ispace-Japan’s first mission in 2023. ispace-U.S.’s next generation lander, called APEX-1.0 builds ...

The Ispace Tenacious rover (top) is seen carried by the Resilience lunar lander at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Tsukuba Space Center in September 2024. - Toru Hanai/Bloomberg/Getty Images ...

The company plans to livestream Thursday’s touchdown attempt on YouTube and X. If Resilience lands upright, Ispace will become the first commercial company outside of the US to pull off such a feat.