JAXA

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A Japanese lander crashed on the Moon after losing track of its location

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“It’s not impossible, so how do we overcome our hurdles?”

Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, attends a press conference in Tokyo on June 6, 2025, to announce the outcome of his company’s second lunar landing attempt. Credit: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images

A robotic lander developed by a Japanese company named ispace plummeted to the Moon’s surface Thursday, destroying a small rover and several experiments intended to demonstrate how future missions could mine and harvest lunar resources.

Ground teams at ispace’s mission control center in Tokyo lost contact with the Resilience lunar lander moments before it was supposed to touch down in a region called Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of Cold, a basaltic plain in the Moon’s northern hemisphere.

A few hours later, ispace officials confirmed what many observers suspected. The mission was lost. It’s the second time ispace has failed to land on the Moon in as many tries.

“We wanted to make Mission 2 a success, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to land,” said Takeshi Hakamada, the company’s founder and CEO.

Ryo Ujiie, ispace’s chief technology officer, said the final data received from the Resilience lander—assuming it was correct—showed it at an altitude of approximately 630 feet (192 meters) and descending too fast for a safe landing. “The deceleration was not enough. That was a fact,” Ujiie told reporters in a press conference. “We failed to land, and we have to analyze the reasons.”

The company said in a press release that a laser rangefinder used to measure the lander’s altitude “experienced delays in obtaining valid measurement values.” The downward-facing laser fires light pulses toward the Moon during descent, and clocks the time it takes to receive a reflection. This time delay at light speed tells the lander’s guidance system how far it is above the lunar surface. But something went wrong in the altitude measurement system on Thursday.

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

Controllers sent a command to reboot the lander in hopes of reestablishing communication, but the Resilience spacecraft remained silent.

“Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing, our top priority is to swiftly analyze the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause,” Hakamada said in a statement. “We will strive to restore trust by providing a report of the findings to our shareholders, payload customers, Hakuto-R partners, government officials, and all supporters of ispace.”

Overcoming obstacles

The Hakuto name harkens back to ispace’s origin in 2010 as a contender for the Google Lunar X-Prize, a sweepstakes that offered a $20 million grand prize to the first privately funded team to put a lander on the Moon. Hakamada’s group was called Hakuto, which means “white rabbit” in Japanese. The prize shut down in 2018 without a winner, leading some of the teams to dissolve or find new purpose. Hakamada stayed the course, raised more funding, and rebooted the program under the name Hakuto-R.

It’s a story of resilience, hence the name of ispace’s second lunar lander. The mission made it closer to the Moon than the ispace’s first landing attempt in 2023, but Thursday’s failure is a blow to Hakamada’s project.

“As a fact, we tried twice and we haven’t been able to land on the Moon,” Hakamada said through an interpreter. “So we have to say it’s hard to land on the Moon, technically. We know it’s not easy. It’s not something that everyone can do. We know it’s hard, but the important point is it’s not impossible. The US private companies have succeeded in landing, and also JAXA in Japan has succeeded in landing, so it’s not impossible. So how do we overcome our hurdles?”

The Resilience lander and Tenacious rover, seen mounted near the top of the spacecraft, inside a test facility at the Tsukuba Space Center in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. Credit: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In April 2023, ispace’s first lander crashed on the Moon due to a similar altitude measurement problem. The spacecraft thought it was on the surface of the Moon, but was actually firing its engine to hover at an altitude of 3 miles (5 kilometers). The spacecraft ran out of fuel and went into a free fall before impacting the Moon.

Engineers blamed software as the most likely reason for the altitude-measurement problem. During descent, ispace’s lander passed over a 10,000-foot-tall (3,000-meter) cliff, and the spacecraft’s computer interpreted the sudden altitude change as erroneous.

Ujiie, who leads ispace’s technical teams, said the failure mode Thursday was “similar” to that of the first mission two years ago. But at least in ispace’s preliminary data reviews, engineers saw different behavior from the Resilience lander, which flew with a new type of laser rangefinder after ispace’s previous supplier stopped producing the device.

“From Mission 1 to Mission 2, we improved the software,” Ujiie said. “Also, we improved how to approach the landing site… We see different phenomena from Mission 1, so we have to do more analysis to give you any concrete answers.”

If ispace landed smoothly on Thursday, the Resilience spacecraft would have deployed a small rover developed by ispace’s European subsidiary. The rover was partially funded by the Luxembourg Space Agency with support from the European Space Agency. It carried a shovel to scoop up a small amount of lunar soil and a camera to take a photo of the sample. NASA had a contract with ispace to purchase the lunar soil in a symbolic proof of concept to show how the government might acquire material from commercial mining companies in the future.

The lander also carried a water electrolyzer experiment to demonstrate technologies that could split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, critical resources for a future Moon base. Other payloads aboard the Resilience spacecraft included cameras, a food production experiment, a radiation monitor, and a Swedish art project called “MoonHouse.”

The spacecraft chassis used for ispace’s first two landing attempts was about the size of a compact car, with a mass of about 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) when fully fueled. The company’s third landing attempt is scheduled for 2027 with a larger lander. Next time, ispace will fly to the Moon in partnership between the company’s US subsidiary and Draper Laboratory, which has a contract with NASA to deliver experiments to the lunar surface.

Track record

The Resilience lander launched in January on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding to space in tandem with a commercial Moon lander named Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace. Firefly’s lander took a more direct journey to the Moon and achieved a soft landing on March 2. Blue Ghost operated on the lunar surface for two weeks and completed all of its objectives.

The trajectory of ispace’s lander was slower, following a lower-energy, more fuel-efficient path to the Moon before entering lunar orbit last month. Once in orbit, the lander made a few more course corrections to line up with its landing site, then commenced its final descent on Thursday.

Thursday’s landing attempt was the seventh time a privately developed Moon lander tried to conduct a controlled touchdown on the lunar surface.

Two Texas-based companies have had the most success. One of them, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the Moon in February 2024, marking the first time a commercial lander reached the lunar surface intact. But the lander tipped over after touchdown, cutting its mission short after achieving some limited objectives. A second Intuitive Machines lander reached the Moon in one piece in March of this year, but it also fell over and didn’t last as long as the company’s first mission.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost operated for two weeks after reaching the lunar surface, accomplishing all of its objectives and becoming the first fully successful privately owned spacecraft to land and operate on the Moon.

Intuitive Machines, Firefly, and a third company—Astrobotic Technology—have launched their lunar missions under contract with a NASA program aimed at fostering a commercial marketplace for transportation to the Moon. Astrobotic’s first lander failed soon after its departure from Earth. The first two missions launched by ispace were almost fully private ventures, with limited participation from the Japanese space agency, Luxembourg, and NASA.

The Earth looms over the Moon’s horizon in this image from lunar orbit captured on May 27, 2025, by ispace’s Resilience lander. Credit: ispace

Commercial travel to the Moon only began in 2019, so there’s not much of a track record to judge the industry’s prospects. When NASA started signing contracts for commercial lunar missions, the then-chief of the agency’s science vision, Thomas Zurbuchen, estimated the initial landing attempts would have a 50-50 chance of success. On the whole, NASA’s experience with Intuitive Machines, Firefly, and Astrobotic isn’t too far off from Zurbuchen’s estimate, with one full success and a couple of partial successes.

The commercial track record worsens if you include private missions from ispace and Israel’s Beresheet lander.

But ispace and Hakamada haven’t given up on the dream. The company’s third mission will launch under the umbrella of the same NASA program that contracted with Intuitive Machines, Firefly, and Astrobotic. Hakamada cited the achievements of Firefly and Intuitive Machines as evidence that the commercial model for lunar missions is a valid one.

“The ones that have the landers, there are two companies I mentioned. Also, Blue Origin maybe coming up. Also, ispace is a possibility,” Hakamada said. “So, very few companies. We would like to catch up as soon as possible.”

It’s too early to know how the failure on Thursday might impact ispace’s next mission with Draper and NASA.

“I have to admit that we are behind,” said Jumpei Nozaki, director and chief financial officer at ispace. “But we do not really think we are behind from the leading group yet. It’s too early to decide that. The players in the world that can send landers to the Moon are very few, so we still have some competitive edge.”

“Honestly, there were some times I almost cried, but I need to lead this company, and I need to have a strong will to move forward, so it’s not time for me to cry,” Hakamada said.

Photo of Stephen Clark

Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the world’s space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet.

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Astroscale aced the world’s first rendezvous with a piece of space junk

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Astroscale’s US subsidiary won a $25.5 million contract from the US Space Force in 2023 to build a satellite refueler that can hop around geostationary orbit. Like the ADRAS-J mission, this project is a public-private partnership, with Astroscale committing $12 million of its own money. In January, the Japanese government selected Astroscale for a contract worth up to $80 million to demonstrate chemical refueling in low-Earth orbit.

The latest win for Astroscale came Thursday, when the Japanese Ministry of Defense awarded the company a contract to develop a prototype satellite that could fly in geostationary orbit and collect information on other objects in the domain for Japan’s military and intelligence agencies.

“We are very bullish on the prospects for defense-related business,” said Nobu Matsuyama, Astroscale’s chief financial officer.

Astroscale’s other projects include a life extension mission for an unidentified customer in geostationary orbit, providing a similar service as Northrop Grumman’s Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV).

So, can Astroscale really do all of this? In an era of a militarized final frontier, it’s easy to see the usefulness of sidling up next to a “non-cooperative” satellite—whether it’s to refuel it, repair it, de-orbit it, inspect it, or (gasp!) disable it. Astroscale’s demonstration with ADRAS-J showed it can safely operate near another object in space without navigation aids, which is foundational to any of these applications.

So far, governments are driving demand for this kind of work.

Astroscale raised nearly $400 million in venture capital funding before going public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last June. After quickly spiking to nearly $1 billion, the company’s market valuation has dropped to about $540 million as of Thursday. Astroscale has around 590 full-time employees across all its operating locations.

Matsuyama said Astroscale’s total backlog is valued at about 38.9 billion yen, or $260 million. The company is still in a ramp-up phase, reporting operating losses on its balance sheet and steep research and development spending that Matsuyama said should max out this year.

“We are the only company that has proved RPO technology for non-cooperative objects, like debris, in space,” Okada said last month.

“In simple terms, this means approach and capture of objects,” Okada continued. “This capability did not exist before us, but one’s mastering of this technology enables you to provide not only debris removal service, but also orbit correction, refueling, inspection, observation, and eventually repair and reuse services.”

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There are 2,000-plus dead rockets in orbit—here’s a rare view of one

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Astroscale's ADRAS-J spacecraft captured these views of the H-IIA rocket upper stage on July 15.

Enlarge / Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft captured these views of the H-IIA rocket upper stage on July 15.

There are more than 2,000 mostly intact dead rockets circling the Earth, but until this year, no one ever launched a satellite to go see what one looked like after many years of tumbling around the planet.

In February, a Japanese company named Astroscale sent a small satellite into low-Earth orbit on top of a Rocket Lab launcher. A couple of months later, Astroscale’s ADRAS-J (Active Debris Removal by Astroscale-Japan) spacecraft completed its pursuit of a Japanese rocket stuck in orbit for more than 15 years.

ADRAS-J photographed the upper stage of an H-IIA rocket from a range of several hundred meters and then backed away. This was the first publicly released image of space debris captured from another spacecraft using rendezvous and proximity operations.

Since then, Astroscale has pulled off more complex maneuvers around the H-IIA upper stage, which hasn’t been controlled since it deployed a Japanese climate research satellite in January 2009. Astroscale attempted to complete a 360-degree fly-around of the H-IIA rocket last month, but the spacecraft triggered an autonomous abort one-third through the maneuver after detecting an attitude anomaly.

ADRAS-J flew away from the H-IIA rocket for several weeks. After engineers determined the cause of the glitch that triggered the abort, ADRAS-J fired thrusters to approach the upper stage again this month. The ADRAS-J spacecraft is about the size of a kitchen oven, while the H-IIA rocket it’s visiting is nearly the size of a city bus.

Astroscale’s satellite completed two fly-around maneuvers of the H-IIA upper stage on July 15 and 16, examining all sides of the rocket as it soared more than 350 miles (560 kilometers) above the planet. Engineers also wanted to measure the upper stage’s spin rate and spin axis. At first glance, the upper stage appears remarkably similar to the way it looked when it launched. Despite exposure to the harsh conditions of space, the rocket’s outer skin remains covered in orange foam insulation, and the engine nozzle still shines as if it were new.

ADRAS-J autonomously maneuvered around the rocket at a distance of about 50 meters (164 feet), using navigation data from a light detection and ranging sensor and Astroscale’s custom-developed guidance algorithms to control its position as the vehicles moved around Earth at nearly 4.7 miles per second (7.6 kilometers per second). This is the crux of the challenge for ADRAS-J because the rocket is unpowered and unable to hold position. The upper stage also lacks laser reflectors and targets that would aid an approaching spacecraft.

This is a first

These types of complex maneuvers, known as rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO), are common for crew and cargo spacecraft around the International Space Station. Other commercial satellites have demonstrated formation-flying and even docking with a spacecraft that wasn’t designed to connect with another vehicle in orbit.

Military satellites from the United States, Russia, and China also have RPO capabilities, but as far as we know, these spacecraft have only maneuvered in ultra-close range around so-called “cooperative” objects designed to receive them. In 2003, the Air Force Research Laboratory launched a small satellite named XSS-10 to inspect the upper stage of a Delta II rocket in orbit, but it had a head start. XSS-10 maneuvered around the same rocket that deployed it, rather than pursuing a separate target.

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A Japanese spacecraft faceplanted on the Moon and lived to tell the tale

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Japan's SLIM spacecraft is seen nose down on the surface of the Moon.

Japan’s SLIM spacecraft is seen nose down on the surface of the Moon.

Japan’s first lunar lander made an unsteady touchdown on the Moon last week, moments after one of its two main engines inexplicably lost power and apparently fell off the spacecraft, officials said Thursday.

About the size of a small car, the Small Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed on Friday, making Japan the fifth country to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface. Shortly after landing, ground teams in Japan realized the spacecraft was not recharging its battery with its solar panels. The evidence at the time suggested that SLIM likely ended up in an unexpected orientation on the Moon, with its solar cells facing away from the Sun.

With the benefit of six days of data crunching and analysis, officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) briefed reporters Thursday on what they have learned about SLIM’s landing. Indeed, the spacecraft toppled over after touching down, with its nose planted into the lunar regolith and its rear propulsion section pointed toward space.

It turns out that SLIM overcame a lot to get to that point. In the final minute of Friday’s descent, one of SLIM’s two engines failed, leaving the craft’s sole remaining engine to bring the spacecraft in for an off-balance landing. Still, JAXA officials said the spacecraft achieved nearly all of its primary objectives. The roughly $120 million robotic mission made the most pinpoint landing on the Moon in history, just as it set out to do.

“From the spacecraft, we were able to acquire all the technical data related to navigation guidance leading to landing, which will be necessary for future pinpoint landing technology, as well as navigation camera image data during descent and on the lunar surface,” JAXA said in a statement.

One of two tiny robots released by SLIM just before landing relayed a remarkable image of the lander standing upside down a short distance away. This might be the first close-up view of a crash landing, however gentle, on another world.

One plucky bird

Based on the update JAXA released Thursday, it’s extraordinary that SLIM made it to the surface in one piece.

After launching in September and arriving at the Moon in December, SLIM lined up for a final descent to the lunar surface on Friday. Around 20 minutes before landing, the spacecraft ignited its two hydrazine-fueled rocket engines for a braking maneuver to drop out of lunar orbit.

JAXA officials said everything went according to plan in the initial phases of the descent. The spacecraft pitched over from a horizontal orientation to begin a final vertical descent to the surface. SLIM’s guidance computer was preloaded with a map of the landing zone, and an onboard navigation camera took pictures of the Moon’s surface throughout the landing sequence. The spacecraft’s computer used these images to compare to the map, allowing SLIM to autonomously correct its course along the way.

The SLIM spacecraft was built by Mitsubishi Electric under contract with JAXA.

Enlarge / The SLIM spacecraft was built by Mitsubishi Electric under contract with JAXA.

JAXA

But at an altitude of around 160 feet (50 meters), something went wrong with the spacecraft’s propulsion system. Less than a minute before touchdown, one of the engines suddenly lost thrust, and moments later, a down-facing navigation camera caught a glimpse of what appeared to be one of the engine nozzles falling away from the spacecraft. JAXA said engineers believe the engine failure was likely caused by “some external factor other than the main engine itself.” Officials are still investigating to determine the root cause.

The spacecraft continued descending on the power of its remaining engine, but it became more difficult to control the lander. The thrust from the single engine imparted a sideways motion to the spacecraft. Normally, SLIM would have used thrusters to tilt itself from the vertical orientation necessary for the final descent and into a position to plop itself on the lunar surface along the spacecraft’s long axis. SLIM had five crushable landing legs to absorb the force of the gentle impact.

While this two-stage landing sequence was the plan, JAXA said Thursday that the spacecraft “touched the ground in an almost straight standing position with lateral velocity.” The vertical speed at touchdown was about 3.1 mph (1.4 meters per second), slightly slower than the expected descent rate.

“Because the ground contact conditions such as lateral speed and attitude exceeded the specification range, a large attitude change occurred after touchdown, and the aircraft settled in a different attitude than expected,” JAXA said.

In other words, the squirrelly landing caused the spacecraft to tip over. SLIM settled in a bottoms-up position on a shallow slope rather than on its side. Its solar panel wasn’t facing up but was instead pointed toward the west, away from the Sun’s position in the eastern morning sky at the landing site.

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Japan becomes the fifth nation to land a spacecraft on the Moon

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Artist's illustration of the SLIM spacecraft on final descent to the Moon.

Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of the SLIM spacecraft on final descent to the Moon.

The Japanese space agency’s first lunar lander arrived on the the Moon’s surface Friday, but a power system problem threatens to cut short its mission.

Japan’s robotic Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission began a 20-minute final descent using two hydrazine-fueled engines to drop out of orbit. After holding to hover at 500 meters and then 50 meters altitude, SLIM pulsed its engines to fine-tune its vertical descent before touching down at 10: 20 am EST (15: 20 UTC).

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which manages the SLIM mission, streamed the landing live on YouTube. About two hours after the touchdown, JAXA officials held a press conference to confirm the spacecraft made a successful landing, apparently quite close to its target. SLIM aimed to settle onto the lunar surface adjacent to a nearly 900-foot (270-meter) crater named Shioli, located in a region called the Sea of Nectar on the near side of the Moon.

But ground controllers at JAXA’s Sagamihara Campus in the western suburbs of Tokyo soon discovered the lander was in trouble. Its solar array was not generating electricity after landing, and without power, officials expected SLIM to drain its battery within a few hours.

In what could be the mission’s final hours, engineers prioritized downloading data from SLIM, including imagery taken during its descent, and potentially new pictures captured from the lunar surface. Official reported good communications links between SLIM and ground stations on Earth.

“Minimum success”

Even if SLIM falls silent, the mission has achieved its minimum success criteria, JAXA said. The SLIM mission is a technology demonstrator developed to verify the performance of a new vision-based navigation system needed for precision Moon landings.

“First and foremost, landing was made and communication was established,” said Hiroshi Yamakawa, JAXA’s president. “So a minimum success was made in my view.”

One of the core goals of the SLIM mission was to land within 100 meters (about 330 feet) of its bullseye. This accomplishment would be a remarkable improvement in lunar landing precision, which typically is measured in miles or kilometers. It would also be an enabling capability for future Moon missions because it lays the foundation for future spacecraft to land closer to lunar resources, such as water ice.

Hitoshi Kuninaka, director general of JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, said it will take about a month for engineers to fully analyze data from SLIM and determine the precision of the landing.

“But as you saw on the real-time data livestream, SLIM did trace the expected course, so my personal impression is that we probably have been able to more or less achieve a high precision landing within 100-meter accuracy,” Kuninaka said. “So the solar cell state is unlikely to impact the full success criteria.”

Kuninaka said ground teams have seen no evidence of any damage to the solar array on SLIM. It’s possible the lander is sitting in an orientation with its solar cells facing away from the Sun. All other components of SLIM, including its propulsion, thermal, and communication systems, all appear to be functioning well.

SLIM launched September 6 on top of a Japanese H-IIA rocket, riding to orbit alongside an X-ray astronomy telescope. The spacecraft took a long route to get to the Moon, trading time for fuel to preserve propellant for Friday’s landing attempt. SLIM entered orbit around the Moon on December 25, then completed several maneuvers to settle into a low-altitude orbit in preparation for the descent to the surface.

A milestone moment for Japan

The landing of SLIM made Japan the fifth country to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon, following the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and India. But landing on the Moon is a hazardous thing to do. Three commercial landers similar in scale to SLIM failed to safely reach the lunar surface over the last five years.

One of those was developed by a Japanese company called ispace. Most recently, the US company Astrobotic attempted to send its Peregrine lander to the Moon, but a propellant leak cut short the mission. After looping more than 200,000 miles into space, Peregrine reentered Earth’s atmosphere Wednesday, where it was expected to burn up 10 days after its launch.

A Russian lander crashed into the Moon in August, and India’s first lunar lander failed in 2019. India tried again last year and made history when Chandrayaan 3 safely landed.

This artist's illustration shows the SLIM spacecraft descending toward the Moon and ejecting two deployable robots onto the lunar surface.

Enlarge / This artist’s illustration shows the SLIM spacecraft descending toward the Moon and ejecting two deployable robots onto the lunar surface.

Japan’s SLIM mission was primarily designed to test out new guidance algorithms and sensors, rather than pursuing scientific objectives. The technologies riding to the Moon on SLIM could be used on future spacecraft bound for the Moon. SLIM cost the Japanese government approximately 18 billion yen ($121 million) to design, develop, and build, according to JAXA.

The spacecraft is modest in size, measuring nearly 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall and nearly 9 feet (2.7 meters) across. Without propellant in its tanks, SLIM has a mass of roughly 660 pounds (200 kilograms).

“The start of the deceleration to the landing on the Moon’s surface is expected to be a breathless, numbing 20 minutes of terror!” said Kushiki Kenji, sub-project manager for the SLIM mission, before the landing.

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