Tonight, the Resilience spacecraft built by the Japanese company ispace will land on the Moon. We will tell you where you can watch a live broadcast of this event, as well as the main objectives of the mission.
Resilience technical device
Resilience is ispace’s second attempt to conquer the Moon. The first one took place in 2023. The Hakuto-R was very close to reaching its goal, but due to a malfunction, it crashed during the final landing phase. The ispace hopes that Resilience will be able to do what its predecessor failed to do.
The spacecraft was launched on January 15, 2025. After a 3.5-month flight, during which it performed several course corrections and gravity maneuvers, the Earth’s messenger successfully entered orbit around the Moon.
Resilience measures 2.5 by 2.3 meters and has a dry mass of 340 kg. The vehicle is powered by solar panels and carries the following 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.
- a commemorative plate and a UNESCO-provided memory disk containing 275 Earth languages.
In addition to the above cargoes, RESILIENCE also carries a 5-kilogram Tenacious micro-rover developed by ispace-EUROPA. It measures 26 centimeters high, 31.5 centimeters wide, and 54 centimeters long. It is built from carbon fiber reinforced plastic and is equipped with an HD camera and a shovel. Tenacious will use it to collect samples of regolith, which will then be photographed. Like the main vehicle, the rover also carries a symbolic cargo: a small red house in a white frame, created by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
Mare Frigoris, located in the northern part of the visible side of the Moon, was chosen as the landing site for the spacecraft. It was formed more than 3.5 billion years ago as a result of powerful basaltic eruptions that flooded the lowland area.
Live broadcast of the landing
The live broadcast of the Resilience landing will begin on June 5 at 6:10 p.m. GMT (1:10 p.m. EST). It will be conducted on YouTube, as well as social network X. If all goes well, the device will touch the lunar surface at 7:17 p.m. GMT (2:10 p.m. EST). Contact with the mission will be maintained through ESA space communication stations.
Resilience is designed to operate for one lunar day (14 Earth days). Since the vehicle has no heaters, it is unlikely that it will survive a cold lunar night.
