A private lunar lander from Japan is now circling the moon, with just another month to go before it attempts a touchdown. Tokyo-based ispace said Wednesday morning its Resilience lander entered lunar orbit. “The countdown to lunar landing has now officially begun,” the company said in a statement. SpaceX launched Resilience with U.S-based Firefly Aerospace’s […]
Science
Private Japanese lunar lander enters orbit around moon ahead of a June touchdown
Audio By Carbonatix
A private lunar lander from Japan is now circling the moon, with just another month to go before it attempts a touchdown.
Tokyo-based ispace said Wednesday morning its Resilience lander entered lunar orbit.
“The countdown to lunar landing has now officially begun,” the company said in a statement.
SpaceX launched Resilience with U.S-based Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander in January. Firefly got there first in March, becoming the first private outfit to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Another American company, Intuitive Machines, landed a spacecraft on the moon a few days later, but it ended up sideways in a crater.
Now it’s ispace’s turn. It’s targeting the first week of June for Resilience’s touchdown. The company’s first lander crashed into the moon in 2023.
The lander holds a mini rover equipped with a scoop to gather lunar dirt for analysis as well as other experiments.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.