Japan Is About To Land On The Moon — Here’s How To Watch It Live
Topline
Tokyo, Japan-based ispace will make its second attempt to land its “Resilience” lunar lander on the moon’s near side on Thursday, June 5, 2025, just two years after its failed first attempt.
An artist’s impression of ispace’s RESILIENCE lander and TENACIOUS micro rover on the surface of the … More
Key Facts
The lunar lander, called “Resilience,” will attempt to land on the moon at 3:24 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 5. The event will be live-streamed on the ispace website and on YouTube, with live coverage beginning at 2:10 p.m. EDT.
The spacecraft will attempt to land in Mare Frigoris (“Sea of Cold”), a a long and thin lunar lunar mare in the far north of the moon’s Northern Hemisphere. A mare on the moon is a dark plain formed by lava flowing into basins formed by meteor impacts.
The landing window is open from June 6 through June 8, 2025, so it’s possible that the exact time of touchdown will change. According to ispace, there are also three backup landing sites.
The attempt is part of a mission called ispace SMBC x Hakuto-R Venture Moon. It will have taken the spacecraft 141 days to reach the moon since it was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on January 15, 2025.
What Will Happen After It Lands On The Moon
If a safe landing is executed, a small rover called “Tenacious” will conduct a technology demonstration, attempting to use a small shovel to extract regolith — dust and broken rocks on the surface of the moon — while moving around on the lunar surface. It will send data back to the lander as well as images from its high-definition camera. Also on board “Resilience” are water electrolyzer equipment, a food production experiment, a deep space radiation probe, a commemorative alloy plate, and a model house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg dubbed the “Moonhouse.”
An image of the Earth taken by the RESILIENCE lunar lander on Feb. 18, 2025.
Japan On The Moon
During its first attempt to land on the moon on April 25, 2023, ispace lost contact with its Hakuto-R lander, suggesting a crash landing. On January 19, 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon — dubbed SLIM — made a precision landing, albeit landing upside-down. That made Japan the fifth country to make a soft landing on the moon after the Soviet Union (now Russia), the U.S., China and India.
Ispace: Moon Shuttle, Mining And Future Missions
ispace is describes itself as a global lunar exploration company, which plans to create frequent, low-cost “moon shuttle” transportation to the lunar surface, specifically for mining companies. It has further missions to fly alternative landers scheduled for 2026 and 2027. On June 3, 2025, ispace announced that it had signed a contract worth around $2.9 million with the European Space Agency to launch a rover called MAGPIE.
Further Reading