Japanese start-up ispace has revealed the reason for the crash landing of its second lunar lander on the Moon’s surface.

The firm released a ‘technical cause analysis for the HAKUTO-R Mission 2, which was ispace’s second failed attempt for its private lunar lander (RESILIENCE) to touchdown on the Moon’s surface.

Earlier this week the US space agency NASA had provided imagery of the crash site captured from its own spacecraft (LRO).

Crash cause

And now ipsace in its technical cause analysis said it “has completed the analysis of flight data of “SMBC x HAKUTO-R VENTURE MOON” of Mission 2, obtained by the HAKUTO-R Mission Control Center, regarding the landing sequence of the RESILIENCE lander on June 6, 2025.”

It said that the analysis identified an anomaly in the Laser Range Finder (LRF) that resulted in the hard landing, resulting in the loss of the RESILIENCE lander.

Essentially the company officials said the Laser Range Finder (LRF) was slow to kick in and properly measure the spacecraft’s distance to the lunar surface.

RESILIENCE was descending at a rapid rate of 138 feet (42 meters) per second when contact was lost, and crashed five seconds later, they said.

“On June 6, despite the united efforts and dedication of the ispace team, our second attempt at a lunar landing was unsuccessful, resulting in deep disappointment,” said Takeshi Hakamada, founder & CEO of ispace. “We deeply regret that we were unable to meet the expectations of our shareholders, payload customers, HAKUTO-R partners, government officials, and all others who supported us.”

“Since the moment of landing, we have remained committed to moving forward and identifying the root causes. For the past 18 days, every employee has worked tirelessly to be able to transparently share the results of the technical cause analysis,” said Hakamada.

“ispace will not let this be a setback,” Hakamada concluded. “We will not stop here, but as determined pioneers of the cislunar economy, we will strive to regain the trust of all stakeholders and embark on the next mission. “Never Quit the Lunar Quest.”

First mission

The June mission had been ispace’s second failed attempted landing on the Moon.

The Japanese firm had famously attempted to ‘soft-land’ its M1 lunar lander on the Moon in April 2023 – defined as one which avoids damage to the lander – by slowing it down from nearly 6,000km/hour (3,700 mph).

Unfortunately, that first ever attempt in 2023 by a private company to land on the Moon did not succeed, after ispace admitted that its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander had likely crashed after it lost contact with it.

Faulty software during the descent was blamed at the time.

Despite the two failures, ispace is pressing ahead with its third moon landing attempt in 2027.

A fourth mission is also planned, and extra tests and improvements will add 1.5 billion yen (more than $10 million) to the development costs, company officials said.

Difficult missions

Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the United States, China, India and Japan.

Of those, only the US has landed people on the Moon: namely 12 NASA astronauts in the Apollo missions from 1969 through 1972.

But the first successful private lunar landing took place on 22 February 2024, when Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft successfully landed near the Malapert A crater, about 300 kilometres from the lunar south pole.

That marked the the first time ever that a commercial organisation had successfully landed its hardware on the moon.

Then in March 2025, US-based private aerospace firm Firefly Aerospace and it’s Blue Ghost lunar lander successfully arrived on the Moon.