9 Jan, 2025

RESILIENCE Lunar Lander & TENACIOUS Micro Rover to launch on January 15, 2025

TOKYO –January 9, 2025 – ispace, inc. (ispace) )(TOKYO: 9348), a global lunar exploration company, announced today that its SMBC x HAKUTO-R Venture Moon Mission 2 featuring the  RESILIENCE lunar lander and TENACIOUS micro rover is scheduled to launch on Jan. 15, 2025, at 06:11 UTC.

“The RESILIENCE lander and TENACIOUS rover are being loaded onto the Falcon 9 rocket, and we are getting ready for launch,” said Takeshi Hakamada, Founder & CEO of ispace. “Together, we will open the door to success, hand in hand with our dedicated employees, their supportive families, our shareholders who continue to believe in ispace’s vision, our HAKUTO-R partners, government stakeholders, customers, and many others. I firmly believe this marks the beginning of a new chapter for our company.”

To highlight the second mission, ispace and Citizen Watch, a corporate partner of ispace, also unveiled a countdown clock that will be displayed in public areas around Tokyo. The clock will display the time until the launch occurs from Florida, which will be viewed via a livestream hosted by ispace.

From left: Takeshi Hakamada, Founder & CEO of ispace and Shigeru Tanaka, General Manager, Advertising Department Citizen Watch Co., Ltd., unveil the Mission 2 Countdown Clock at a press conference in Tokyo.

On board the RESILIENCE lunar lander will be commercial customer payloads including:

• Water electrolyzer equipment: From Takasago Thermal Engineering Co.
• Food production experiment: A self-contained module from Euglena Co.
• Deep space radiation probe: Developed by the Department of Space Science and Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan
• Commemorative alloy plate: Developed by Bandai Namco Research Institute, Inc. and modeled after “Charter of the Universal Century” from the animation Mobile Suit Gundam UC
• TENACIOUS micro rover: Developed by ispace-EUROPE, this rover will explore the landing site, collect lunar regolith, and relay data back to the lander. It will be equipped with a forward-mounted HD camera and a shovel.
• Moonhouse: A model house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg that will be mounted on the rover.

The RESILIENCE lander will serve as a cultural artifact, carrying a UNESCO memory disk that preserves linguistic and cultural diversity.

Mission 2 Milestones

ispace has released a transparent set of criteria known as Mission 2 Milestones between launch and landing and aims to achieve the success criteria established for each of these milestones. The results from this mission as part of the HAKUTO-R lunar exploration program, will be weighed and evaluated against the criteria and lessons learned will be incorporated into future missions already in development.

About ispace, inc. (https://ispace-inc.com)

ispace, a global lunar resource development company with the vision, “Expand our planet. Expand our future.”, specializes in designing and building lunar landers and rovers. ispace aims to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world by providing high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon. The company has business entities in Japan, Luxembourg, and the United States with more than 300 employees worldwide. For more information, visit: www.ispace-inc.com and follow us on X: @ispace_inc.