Japan’s private space company, ispace, is now poised to achieve its ambitious goal of landing a probe on the Moon after two previous attempts. The Resilience probe, launched on January 15, 2025, successfully entered orbit around the Moon three and a half months later. Its planned landing site in Mare Frigoris has been confirmed using an image taken by NASA’s LRO vehicle.
The lunar surface is characterized by flat topography with minimal large impact craters, making it an ideal location for Resilience to deploy its instruments and 5-kilogram Tenacious micro-rover. The probe will land on June 5, marking a significant milestone in Japan’s lunar exploration efforts.
Resilience carries a payload of scientific instruments, as well as a token payload, designed to pave the way for future human missions to the Moon. Its predecessor, Hakuto-R, suffered a malfunction during its landing attempt in 2023, but ispace hopes that Resilience will succeed where its previous mission failed.
The image taken by LRO shows the planned landing site with a white frame highlighting an estimated 70-km-wide area. This follows earlier reports of Resilience’s near-lunar selfies captured by the LROC. With this new mission, Japan takes another step towards establishing itself as a leading player in lunar exploration and research.
Source: https://universemagazine.com/en/lro-photographed-the-future-landing-site-of-the-resilience-spacecraft