Ispace Targets June 6 for Resilience Moon Lander Touchdown Following Successful Lunar Flyby

Ispace, a Tokyo-based company, has announced a target date of June 6 for the lunar touchdown attempt of its Resilience lander. The spacecraft is slated to land at 3:24 p.m. EST near the center of Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain in the moon's northern reaches. However, the company has identified three alternative landing sites, with a landing window open from June 6 through June 8, should conditions change. Resilience launched on January 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, sharing the ride with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander, which successfully landed on the moon. Resilience is taking a longer route to the moon, performing well in deep space and completing five of ten preplanned mission milestones, including a lunar flyby on February 14. The mission aims for a soft landing on the moon, a challenging task due to the lack of atmosphere. If successful, the Tenacious rover, built by Ispace's European subsidiary, will deploy to collect lunar soil samples under a NASA contract. The lander also carries payloads for radiation monitoring and an experiment to grow algae on the lunar surface. Ispace's first lunar landing attempt in 2023 ended in a hard landing.