Aside from Texas-based Firefly, only five countries have pulled off a successful lunar landing: the Soviet Union, the U.S., ...

Eventually, ispace changed its live feed from a stage with announcers to previous recordings of the creation of the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) tall lander until one of the presenters broke the silence.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s Resilience lunar landers, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in January. Photo: AFP ...

Early this morning, @SpaceX successfully launched a pair of lunar landers from companies @Firefly_Space and @ispace_inc. Their next stop: The #moon. Video by me.

The mission failed because the spacecraft miscalculated its descent as it passed over a crater, causing it to plummet about 3 miles (5 kilometers) to the ground, according to ispace.

Then in March this year, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost – launched on the same SpaceX rocket as ispace’s Resilience – aced its lunar landing attempt.

Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions ...

Ispace, like other businesses, does not have “infinite funds” and cannot afford repeated failures, Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace’s U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month.

Engineers concluded that the spacecraft had a hard landing because of problems with a sensor responsible for measuring its distance from the surface. Ispace’s US subsidiary is working on a larger ...

The spacecraft's laser range finder, or LRF, experienced an anomaly that prevented Resilience from obtaining valid ...

The 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) Resilience launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 15, 2025 alongside another moon lander built by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace.