Ispace of Japan’s Resilience Lander Heads to the Moon: How and When to Watch

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 will provide live coverage of the landing beginning at 2:10 p.m. Eastern time.

What is Ispace, and what happened during its last moon mission?

Ispace emerged from a Japanese team that had aimed to win the Google Lunar X Prize, which offered $20 million for the first privately financed venture to land on the moon. None of the X Prize teams got off the ground before the competition expired in 2018. Takeshi Hakamada, the leader of the Japanese X Prize team, raised private financing to push forward and is the chief executive of Ispace.