Resilience spacecraft likely crashed into the moon, Ispace confirms

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. Scroll through the posts below to relive the Resilience spacecraft’s moon-landing attempt as it unfolded.

Ispace has gone out of its way to make clear that it’s not giving up. The motto underpinning today’s mission was “never quit the lunar quest.” And by all accounts, the company has every intention of sticking with these moon missions until they succeed.

During a news conference hours after the landing attempt, Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada compared Ispace to SpaceX.

“SpaceX has also failed several times, but now SpaceX occupies the launching market,” Hakamada said.

In the earliest days of the Elon Musk-run company, there were several brutal failures of the company’s first rocket, the Falcon 1. It was only on the fourth try, when the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, that SpaceX successfully sent one of its launch vehicles to orbit in 2008.

Before today’s landing attempt, Ispace chief financial officer Jumpei Nozaki told CNN that the company already has the money locked down for a third try at a lunar touchdown. And that likely would not be affected by a failure during Resilience’s mission.

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.

Until then, Ispace has its work cut out for it. 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.

Resilience had been circling about 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the moon in a stable, circular orbit, Ispace confirmed. It then descended successfully to about 20 kilometers (12 miles).

At that point, Resilience “successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration.”

It was not clear exactly how the vehicle was oriented, however. Ispace confirmed only that the spacecraft’s orientation was “nearly vertical” before data was lost.

Before landing, Resilience was expected to complete a pitch-over or roll maneuver that would change its position from lying horizontal in relation to the moon’s surface to sitting upright.

But the biggest issue may lie in how Resilience measured its altitude. That sounds similar to why Ispace’s first lander, the Hakuto-R spacecraft that crash landed in 2023, failed. However, executives said the problems appear to be different.

During Ispace’s 2023 failed landing attempt, Hakuto-R’s software wrongly threw out correct altitude data, which led to the failed landing attempt.

During Resilience’s touchdown attempt today, a laser rangefinder — or a sensor designed to measure distance to the moon’s surface — “experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values.”

“As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing,” a statement from the company noted. “Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface.”

That indicates Resilience likely crashed.

Ispace’s Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie speaks during the news conference on Thursday.

Executives at Ispace are not yet sure what may have happened to Resilience.

The company’s Japan-based leadership said that information sent back from the spacecraft to mission control in the moment before landing was different from the issue that plagued Ispace’s first Hakuto-R lunar lander during a 2023 mission.

“The data that we’ve been looking at — it wasn’t exactly the same as we have seen from the first mission,” said Ispace’s Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie in translated remarks.

The Hakuto-R spacecraft crash-landed during that trip after a software error caused the vehicle to miscalculate its altitude.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is an imaging satellite in orbit around the moon, captured a shot of the first Hakuto-R’s landing site — showing an impact crater that confirmed the vehicle had crashed.

Executives confirmed that they will once again ask NASA if the agency can tune the LRO’s cameras to help confirm what may have happened with Resilience. The spacecraft was expected to land in within a 750-mile-long (1,200-kilometer-long) plain called Mare Frigoris — or the “Sea of Cold.”

Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada speaks during a news conference on Thursday.

During a news conference, Ispace executives confirmed they are no longer trying to regain contact with the lander.

“This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to really take it seriously,” Ispace’s CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in translated remarks.

Mission teams will now look to do a thorough review of what went wrong and apply lessons learned to Ispace’s next project, an attempted lunar landing of a craft called Apex 1.0.

Ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada, who is currently in Tokyo where Resilience mission control center is located, is set to conduct a news conference at 8 p.m. ET.

The event will be broadcast on YouTube here.

In this screenshot from video, teams at ispace mission control wait for landing confirmation from the Resilience lander.

Ispace’s Resilience lander did not take a direct route to the moon, like some spacecraft that went before it, zooming to the lunar surface in mere days.

Resilience instead took a slow, swooping path to the moon that took over four months. (Such a gradual trip required little fuel, which is one way the company has managed to keep Resilience’s price tag down.)

During that time, three teams of Ispace employees have been rotating in and out of the company’s mission control room in Tokyo. Ispace hasn’t needed large teams “on console” — the aerospace term for when an engineer is managing data on a computer in mission control — but at least some engineers have been keeping a close eye over the vehicle during every stretch of this mission.

That experience is extremely valuable, Ispace’s founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada and chief financial officer Jumpei Nozaki told CNN in interviews conducted earlier this year.

All lunar landing attempts — even missions such as this with no humans on board — bring with them an element of risk and awe.

Success is far from guaranteed. Overall, more than half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure, tough odds for a feat humanity first pulled off nearly 60 years ago.

While technology has advanced in the past five decades, the fundamental challenges of landing on the moon remain the same. Here’s what Resilience has had to overcome — and what it has yet to face.

As the space community and stakeholders looked on, waiting for confirmation about the status of the Resilience lander, Ron Garan, a former NASA astronaut and the chairman of Ispace’s US subsidiary, told CNN he did not see anything concerning in the live data shared on the livestream.

“I’m not in the mission control room. I’m not seeing the telemetry, but I’m getting updates on my phone — everything was normal” in the moments before touchdown, Garan said.

Garan also highlighted a fact that many companies vying to build lunar landers have acknowleged: When attempting to develop the technology to go to the moon — and do it on a private-sector budget — it’s a tough feat.

Ispace does have another shot to get this right: The company has a new lander, called Apex 1.0, that it’s developing alongside US-based company Draper. That mission is slated to fly in 2027, and Ispace says it’s got all the funding it needs to get through that mission.

“The reason why we’re doing this,” Garan said of today’s landing attmept, “is to learn.”

“What Ispace has done in the past and will continue to do in the future, is be very open, very transparent, if anything did go wrong,” Garan added.

Ispace just posted an update on social media confirming that the company has not given up hope on the lander.

Ispace also took a few hours to confirm that its last lander failed. Ispace’s CEO previously told CNN that he expected to have contact with the lander at least within the first 10 minutes if everything had gone according to plan.

Ron Garan speaks during the Ispace livestream event in Washington on Thursday.

Ron Garan, a former NASA astronaut and the chairman of Ispace’s US subsidiary, told CNN in an interview: “I’m optimistic that we will have a good outcome.”

Garan said teams can still troubleshoot possible reasons that there may be communications issues with the lander. If the vehicle is tipped on its side, for example, that could create a situation where it takes mission controllers longer to get in touch with Resilience.

“There also is the possibility that we’re not successful. We didn’t land successful. And so if that is the case, then we’re going to figure out, just like we did on Mission 1, figure out what the lessons learned are,” he said.

Ispace’s motto for this mission has been “never quit the lunar quest.” And the company’s CFO previously told CNN that Ispace is fully funded through its third mission, which will make use of a new lander model called Apex 1.0, and will be carried out as part of a contract with NASA.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly speaks during a news conference in Houston in March 2016.

Scott Kelly, the former NASA astronaut famous for his “year in space,” was at the Ispace watch party in Washington, DC, on Thursday. In an interview with CNN, he said he stopped by to support his friend and fellow NASA astronaut corps alumnus Ron Garan, the company’s chairman.

“What (Ispace) is doing is really exciting. But space is hard, and the mood is harder, and like Ron was saying, they met a lot of their objectives so far, which is great,” Kelly said.

He also responded to questions about the space policy furor unfolding on Capitol Hill.

President Donald Trump abruptly yanked his support of the Elon Musk-backed NASA administrator nominee, Jared Isaacman, over the weekend.

“That’s really unfortunate,” Kelly said. “(Isaacman is) such a great guy, and I think uniquely, uniquely qualified for this moment. … I think he would have been an outstanding administrator.”

When asked about Trump’s stated plan to explore Mars — a pivot away from his first-term goal of focusing on returning astronauts to the moon — alongside lunar landing efforts, Kelly said, “NASA is constantly hamstrung by the fact that when we get a new administration, we get a new plan.”

“When President Biden was elected, my brother (Democratic Senator Mark Kelly) made a point to his administration that just because it was President Trump’s plan doesn’t mean we need to abandon it,” Scott Kelly said.

When asked about Trump’s proposal to slash NASA’s science budget by almost 50%, Kelly said NASA “will be decimated.”

On the livestream, Ispace said “we haven’t been able to confirm, but (mission control) members will continuously attempt to communicate with the lander.”

“This is part of the business, unfortunately,” ISpace’s Ron Garan added at an event in Washington, DC. But “one really important thing is the bar is open now.”

A reception area at the ispace livestream event is empty, as attendees await confirmation on the status of the Resilience lunar lander, in Washington on Thursday.

Ispace executives and industry leaders that have gathered at a watch party in Washington, DC are nervously awaiting news.

To fill time, Ron Garan, a former NASA astronaut and the chairman of Ispace’s US subsidiary, is taking questions from the crowd about Ispace’s long-term goals.

He added during a pause, “If I knew how to tap dance, I would.”

In this screenshot from video, teams at ispace mission control wait for landing confirmation from the Resilience lander.

Cameras at Ispace’s mission control have panned to concerned looking faces on engineers.

The status of the vehicle is still unknown, nearly 10 minutes after its projected touchdown time.

Earlier, Ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada had told CNN that mission controllers would ideally learn about a safe touchdown within a minute after landing. After several minutes of troubleshooting, the odds of this mission ending in a success story are beginning to look unlikely.

It’s past the time that Resilience should have landed on the moon. But a clear confirmation of the vehicle’s health and safety has not been given.

At a watch event in Washington, DC, the crowd is quiet and in suspense.

The vehicle is currently just 5 kilometers, or 3 miles, above the lunar surface. Landing should be just moments away. But on the livestream, officials cautioned not to be led astray if the data reading for altitude hits “zero.”

Mission controllers will need to deliver independent confirmation of a safe landing.

The vehicle is now beginning its pitch over and final descent.

There will be no live footage of Reslience’s landing attempt. On missions to deep space, antennas communicating with Earth have limited bandwidth, and mission controllers prioritize precision data over stunning views.

But Resilience should be able to give Ispace a clear indication of how the landing went within just moments.

“We have sensors installed on our landing gear,” Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada told CNN. “Once we land on the moon, there’s a switch that can confirm the landing, and then the signal comes to us.”

During Ispace’s first lanar landing attempt in 2023, that signal never came through, which is why mission controllers had a pretty early indication that something was wrong, Hakamada said. After 10 minutes of troubleshooting, mission controllers declared that landing attempt a failure.

In this screengrab from video, ispace shows a simulation of the Resilience lunar lander's proximity to the moon, in the pitch-up phase.

During the “breaking burn phase” — the lander will “burn very furiously, and then we try to reduce it as much as we can.”

The next phase, called the “breaking burn slash pitch up phase,” will see the vehicle pitch over to the upright position.

Then the vehicle will enter “terminal descent,” as Resilience moves to mere meters above the surface.

The final phase is called terminal landing. That’s when the lander’s engines cut off and — hopefully — mission teams can confirm a safe touchdown.

It’s time for the lander to begin rapidly decelerating. An engine burn lasting about 10 minutes just kicked off. It’s one of the first steps in the final landing process.