HAKUTO-R Mission 2 prepares to land on the Moon

Date:
Thu, 05 Jun 2025 15:40:27 +0000

Description:
Just over two years after the Japanese company ispace attempted but failed to land its The post HAKUTO-R Mission 2 prepares to land on the Moon appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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Just over two years after the Japanese company ispace attempted but failed to land its HAKUTO-R Mission 1, the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Resilience lander will attempt a lunar landing this week. Mission 2 is expected to touch down on the lunar surface at 60.5 degrees north and 4.6 degrees west, in Mare Frigoris, the same region in the Moons northern hemisphere where Mission 1 attempted to touch down at Atlas Crater in 2023.

Resilience , in orbit around the Moon since early May, is scheduled to land one month after its lunar orbit insertion. The spacecraft is scheduled to attempt its landing on Thursday, June 5, at 19:17 UTC (4:17 AM JST Friday, June 6) near the center of Mare Frigoris. The company states there is a contingency plan for up to three alternate sites with dates and times for
each should that be needed.



If Resilience lands according to plan, it will be the second fully successful commercial robotic lunar landing of not just this year but also in history, after Fireflys Blue Ghost Mission 1 Ghost Riders In The Sky, which Resilience shared a ride to orbit with on a Falcon 9. It will also become the second successful Japanese lunar landing after SLIM, which was a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency project.



Other commercial landing attempts include and the Intuitive Machines IM-1 and IM-2 spacecraft, which were able to function for a time on the surface but ended in non-nominal orientations due to landing issues. The ispace companys first HAKUTO-R mission failed due to a misinterpretation of altimeter data caused by a computer software issue exposed when the spacecraft passed a crater wall on its way to the landing site. See Also HAKUTO-R Mission 2
Thread Ispace Lunar Landers Thread NSF Store Click here to Join L2

This interpretation of the data rejecting it as bad when it was in fact correct caused Mission 1 to hover at five kilometers above the lunar
surface. After the lander ran out of fuel, it spun uncontrollably and
impacted the surface, ending the mission. Resilience , though using the same basic HAKUTO-R design as Mission 1, incorporated upgrades from the lessons learned based on the first flight.

After its rideshare launch to the Moon on Jan. 15, 2025, Resilience arrived
in a highly elliptical lunar orbit on May 6 at 20:41 UTC (5:41 AM JST May 7). The arrival came after taking a fuel-efficient trajectory, which included a flyby of the Moon on Feb. 15 before attaining a maximum distance of 1.5 million km from Earth. The Moon as seen from ispaces HAKUTO-R Mission 2
lander Resilience. (Credit: ispace)

The lunar flyby came to within 8,400 km of the lunar surface, the closest Resilience would come to the Moon prior to its orbital insertion. Immediately after orbital insertion, the spacecraft reached a highly elliptical lunar orbit of 44 km by 5,910 km with a 104-degree inclination according to calculations by citizen scientist Scott Tilley. Over the following weeks, the lander gradually lowered its orbit, ending up in a circular orbit around 100 km altitude on May 28 after a 10-minute engine burn.

Resilience, with a 340 kg dry mass, orbits the Moon once every two hours,
and completed all orbital control activities the eighth out of its 10
planned mission milestones a few days before its landing attempt. The
attempt will start with a deorbit burn followed by a pitch-up maneuver to adjust attitude. The lander will move into a terminal descent phase before
its touchdown, and it uses one main landing thruster plus six assist thrusters.

The landing will become the missions ninth milestone, and if all goes well,
it will be followed by establishing a steady power-positive state using Resiliences solar panels, capable of generating up to 350 watts. It will then attempt to obtain a steady communications link. The landing site was chosen
so that the 2.3 m tall lander, with a total footprint of 2.6 x 2.6 m, could remain in contact with Earth at all times. These activities will be the tenth and final mission milestone, which will then allow customer activities on the lunar surface. The Tenacious rover shown in its protective box on the Resilience lander before launch. (Credit: ispace)

Resilience carries a small lunar rover and several payloads from various companies. The micro rover, known as Tenacious, has a carbon fiber structure, masses five kilograms with dimensions of 26 x 31.5 x 54 cm, and was manufactured by ispace in its Luxembourg facility. The rover is carrying a work of art on board, a Falu red miniature cottage called Moonhouse by
Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, which it will deposit on the lunar surface.

Tenacious also features a soil scoop to gather regolith, which it will then photograph for NASA. The rover also contains a forward-mounted
high-definition camera. Tenacious will be controlled from the ground with Resilience, equipped with X-band communications, functioning as a relay, and will rove around the landing site untethered.

The landers secondary payloads include a Takasago Thermal Engineering Company-developed water electrolyzer as well as a food production experiment module developed by the Euglena Company. A radiation probe flown by Taiwans National Central University is also on board, as well as a Charter of the Universal Century commemorative plaque provided by Bandai Namco. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of Resiliences planned landing site in Mare Frigoris. (Credit: NASA/ASU/GSFC)

The United Nations also has a small payload aboard Resilience . The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization provided a memory disk, which will be a cultural artifact aboard the lander. The memory disk
has examples of 275 human languages.

This memory disk, intended to preserve a record of cultural and linguistic diversity, is the latest attempt by humanity to preserve some of its
knowledge aboard space missions. It is similar in purpose to the famous
Golden Records carried by Voyager 1 and 2 and other items included in
missions leaving Earth.

The HAKUTO-R Mission 2, though conceived and operated by a Japanese company, has international elements. The Tenacious rover is actually the first European-built rover to go to the Moon. Moreover, the European Space Agency
is supporting mission communications with ground stations in Argentina, Australia, French Guiana, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Illustration of the APEX 1.0 lander, scheduled for launch in 2027. (Credit: ispace)

The ispace company operates facilities in Japan, Luxembourg, and the United States in Denver, Colorado. The Denver facility is working on the APEX 1.0 lander, which is intended to fly on ispaces Mission 3 to the lunar far side
in 2027. The company develops the lander for NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services as part of Team Draper, led by US space and defense contractor Draper.

Regardless of how HAKUTO-R Mission 2 turns out, more commercial and government-operated robotic landing missions are planned for the lunar
surface prior to human missions planned by NASA and China. After a very long period in the late 20th Century with no lunar missions at all, renewed international competition and cooperation, along with a surging commercial space sector, are expected to keep lunar exploration on this centurys spaceflight agenda.

( Lead image: Rendering of the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 lander Resilience and its Tenacious rover on the lunar surface. Credit: ispace)



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/06/hakuto-r-m2-landing/


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