Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29 per cent fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen (US$766 million).
In 2023, ispace’s first lander crashed into the moon’s surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design is mostly unchanged in Resilience, the company has said.
Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace’s Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of US$16 million, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university.
If the landing had been successful, the 2.3m-high lander and the microwave-sized rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing images of regolith, the moon’s fine-grained surface material, on a contract with US space agency NASA.
Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March.
Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world’s first touchdown of a commercial lunar lander, made its second attempt in March but the lander Athena ended up on its side, just as in the first mission.
Japan last year became the world’s fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander, although in a toppled position.
Despite President Donald Trump’s proposed changes to the US space policy, Japan remains committed to the American-led Artemis moon program, pledging the involvement of Japanese astronauts and technologies for future lunar missions.
Including a third one in 2027 as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program, ispace plans seven more missions in the US and Japan through 2029 to capture increasing demands for lunar transportation.
