Japanese start-up ispace has confirmed Friday (Japanese time) is when it expects its private lunar lander to touchdown on the Moon’s surface.

In an update ispace announced that the “timing for the RESILIENCE lunar lander to touchdown on the lunar surface has been updated to 4:17am JST on June 6, 2025 JST (19:17 UTC, June 5, 2025),” which makes a potential landing likely around 8.17pm on Thursday (5 June) in the United Kingdom.

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

Lunar landings

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

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.

RESILIENCE lunar lander

But now ispace is just hours away from landing its own hardware on the Moon, providing everything goes to plan.

The intention to land ispace’s RESILIENCE lunar lander in the unexplored far north (essentially the top of the Moon).

RESILIENCE holds a lunar rover called Tenacious, which is equipped with a shovel to gather lunar material, as well as a toy-sized Swedish style red house that will be lowered onto the moon’s surface, as a symbol of the rapidly expanding commercial lunar rush.

A live video feed of the ispace attempt can be found here.

Opening the door

In a message from the ispace founder and CEO, Takeshi Hakamada said he was very proud that “ispace will attempt a historic landing on the Moon.”

“Just over two years ago, on April 26, 2023, ispace, operating HAKUTO-R Mission 1, became the first private company in the world to attempt a lunar landing,” said Hakamada. “While the mission achieved significant results, we lost communication with the lander just before touchdown.”

“Since that time, we have drawn on the experience, using it as motivation to move forward with resolve. We are now at the dawn of our next attempt to make history,” he said.

“Our goal is to build the cislunar economy, one in which the Moon and Earth are economically and socially connected,” said Hakamada. “We view the success of the lunar landing as merely a steppingstone toward that goal. We strongly believe that this endeavor and its long-term success will contribute to making life on Earth sustainable for all humanity.”

“I am pleased to have undertaken this challenge together with all our employees, their families, our shareholders who share our vision and continue to believe in us, our payload customers, HAKUTO-R partners, government officials, and everyone who supports ispace,” said Hakamada. “We believe these missions open the door to outer space for more people. We would be honored to share the moment with each of you around the world as we strive to touch the Moon.”

Two other US companies are aiming for moon landings towards the end of 2025.

This includes Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and US-based Astrobotic Technology (whose first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024).