The Japanese Resilience spacecraft has successfully entered orbit around the Moon. Its landing is scheduled for early June.
RESILIENCE has entered lunar orbit! ✅🌔
After approx. 2 months in low-energy transfer orbit and over 1.1 million km of deep-space travel, our lander, TENACIOUS rover + payloads are maintaining a stable attitude in lunar orbit. 30 days to go until landing. We’re one step closer… pic.twitter.com/ZswZj7INg3
— ispace (@ispace_inc) May 7, 2025
Technical design of Resilience
Resilience was built by the Japanese company iSpace. This is the second attempt for it to conquer the moon of our planet. In 2023, it was close to becoming the first private company in history to land its vehicle on the moon. Unfortunately, due to software errors, the Hakuto-R probe crashed on the final section of the descent. But iSpace did not accept the failure and prepared a new lunar lander.
Resilience has dimensions of 2.5 by 2.3 meters, its dry mass is 340 kg. The vehicle is powered by solar panels. It has three main scientific loads:
- water electrolysis equipment from Takasago Thermal Engineering;
- autonomous module for algae-based food production experiments from Euglena;
- probe for open space radiation research developed by the Department of Space Science and Technology at National Central University in Taiwan.
It also carries a commemorative plate and a UNESCO-provided memory disk containing 275 Earth languages and a “Moonhouse” — a small red house in a white frame created by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
In addition to the loads listed above, RESILIENCE also carries the 5-kilogram Tenacious micro-rover developed by ispace-EUROPA. It is 26 cm high, 31.5 cm wide and 54 cm long. It’s built from plastic reinforced with carbon fiber and equipped with an HD camera and shovel. Tenacious will use it to collect samples of regolith, which will then be photographed.
3.5 months to fly to the Moon
Resilience was launched on January 15. It went into space together with the Blue Ghost spacecraft. After separating from the rocket, their paths diverged. Blue Ghost spent several weeks in Earth orbit before flying directly to the Moon. The less fuel-efficient Resilience, on the other hand, was put on a more economical (and slower) trajectory.
Over the next 3.5 months, the spacecraft performed several maneuvers and flew over a million kilometers. As the flight plan intended, it entered a permanent orbit around the moon on May 7.
Resilience is scheduled to land on June 6. The spacecraft should land in Mare Frigoris, located on the visible side of the Moon. Resilience is designed to operate for one lunar day (14 Earth days). Since the spacecraft has no heaters, it is unlikely that it will be able to survive a cold lunar night.
