Resilience, a Private Japanese Spacecraft, Crash-Landed on the Moon
A Japanese spacecraft has probably crashed on the Moon, the second failed landing attempt for Tokyo-based private firm ispace.
The HAKUTO-R Mission 2 (M2) lander — also called Resilience — began its landing sequence from a 100-kilometre-altitude orbit at 3.13am local time on 5 June. The craft was due to land near the centre of Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold) at 4.17am.
The ispace team said at a press conference that it lost contact with M2 when the craft was 192 metres above the Moon's surface and descending faster than expected. An attempt to reboot M2 was also unsuccessful.
[Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter]
M2 didn't receive measurements of the distance between itself and the lunar surface in time to slow down and reach its correct landing speed, the team said.
'It eventually slowed down, but not softly enough,' says Clive Neal, who studies the Moon at the University of Notre Dame in Indianapolis, US. He speculates that the failure was probably caused by a systems issue that wasn't identified and addressed during the M1 landing attempt. 'It's something that I believe will definitely be fixable, because getting that close means there's a few tweaks that are going to be needed for the next one,' he adds.
If M2 had successfully landed on the lunar surface, the mission would have been the second time a commercial company had achieved the feat and a first for a non-US company. ispace's Mission 1 (M1) probably crashed during a landing attempt in April 2023.
Lunar landings are challenging. When M1 crashed, Ryo Ujiie, ispace's chief technology officer said the telemetry — which collects data on the craft's altitude and speed — estimated that M1 was on the surface when it wasn't, causing the lander to free fall.
Speaking to Nature last week, Ujiie said the company had addressed the telemetry issue with M2 and modified its software. 'We also carefully selected how to approach the landing site,' he added.
Had M2 landed successfully, the craft would have supplied electricity for its cargo, including water electrolyzing equipment and a module for food production experiments — developed by Japan-based Takasago Thermal Engineering and biotechnology firm Euglena. A deep space radiation probe made by Taiwan's National Central University, and the 54-centimetre Tenacious rover were also be on board. The rover, created by ispace's European subsidiary in Luxemburg, was going to be released from the lander to collect imagery, location data and lunar sand known as regolith. Tenacious also carries a small red house made by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
The craft launched on 15 January from Cape Canaveral, Florida, onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket was also carrying the Blue Ghost Moon lander — developed by Firefly Aerospace, an aerospace firm based in Texas — which landed on the Moon on 2 March.
M2 took a longer path to the moon than Blue Ghost, performing a lunar flyby on 15 February and spending two months in a low-energy transfer orbit before entering lunar orbit on 7 May. Ujiie says the path was slower because it was a low-energy trajectory, meaning that less fuel was used to move between Earth and lunar orbit.
Richard de Grijs, an astronomer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says there will likely be more private companies trying to land their own crafts on the Moon. 'It seems that the big government players like NASA are quite keen to partner with commercial companies,' he says, because they can develop and launch crafts more cheaply than government bodies. He also expects that more missions will be launched in clusters, like the launch of M2 and Blue Ghost.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on June 6, 2025.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
8 hours ago
NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company's lunar lander. NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace's lander slammed into the moon. The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon's far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week. The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Tom's Guide
8 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
I tested Perplexity vs Google AI overview with 7 prompts — the results were shocking
Search is undergoing a profound change. For decades, Google has dominated the web search world, with some 90% of all searches funnelled through the massive Google machine. But suddenly, with the arrival of artificial intelligence, things are starting to change, and seriously so. Not only are people increasingly using AI products like ChatGPT as their default search tool, but companies like Perplexity are also building businesses around search services. The idea is to combine the power of AI analysis with the huge amount of conventional search data available at the end of a cursor. But Google is fighting back. The company has recently released an advanced search function called AI Overviews, which aims to bridge the two disciplines and deliver the kind of informed search results the market demands. It's a new kind of search on steroids. So how do the two approaches compare in everyday use? We take a look at Google's new AI Overviews and compare the results to Perplexity AI, to see which gives a better bang for the buck. Prompt: Summarize the key contributions of John McCarthy, Geoffrey Hinton and Noam Shazeer to the development of artificial intelligence. We thought we'd start with something close to home - a look at the architects of AI from the past. First impressions are that Google delivers a competent but fairly traditional results page from this request. Its answer of 238 words covers all the basic points and gives a good overview of the points as you'd expect. Perplexity delivers over 400 words, but it's more than just the quantity that's impressive. It's the fact that the results are laid out in a much more engaging manner, with the user being encouraged to explore additional information in a variety of different ways. They can explore related data, look directly at the sources and even regenerate the results to get a different perspective. Where Google seems to do the bare minimum, Perplexity really seems to add user value. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Google 4/10 Perplexity 7/10 Prompt: Create a 3-day itinerary for a first-time visitor to Tokyo on a modest budget. The user is interested in Japanese culture and food, but wants to avoid tourist traps. This is a real kicker, a stark example of the old versus the new. Google completely fails to deliver any meaningful response, but instead retreats to a standard Google search. The answer merely features a selection of third-party websites offering tour advice. This is obviously beneficial to Google as it will no doubt allow it to earn ad revenue. Perplexity, on the other hand, delivers a glorious 1000 words of real down-to-earth itinerary. This includes gorgeous photos, maps and itemized costings, which will be more than enough for the user to get a great idea of the proposed experience. Google 2/10 Perplexity 9/10 Prompt: What is the technology behind noise cancelling headphones? Once again we can see the difference between traditional search results and new style AI analysis, although in this case the difference is not so great. Google's results are very credible with 186 words of explanation, along with a useful YouTube video. Perplexity, however, takes it to a more advanced level. The explanation is roughly the same, but the prose is much more accessible to a layperson. Instead of using the word 'inverse', for example, the app chooses to use simpler English to explain how sound is cancelled. It's a subtle but important use of 500 words to achieve a more understandable answer. Google 6/10 Perplexity 8/10 Prompt: Explain the 'double-dig' method of garden bed preparation and contrast it to no-till farming This is quite an obscure test, involving little-known agricultural techniques. But for gardeners it's a very important topic. Google's response is very workmanlike and informative, and uses 260 words to deliver a good answer to the question. The use of Reddit and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) are also great sources, which add authority to the answer. Unfortunately for Google, Perplexity once again matches and exceeds in response quality. The RHS and Reddit are also mentioned, as is YouTube. But two things really make this answer stand out. First, the use of a great table to explain the differences at a glance and, most importantly, a conclusion, which gives a clear indication as to why no-dig is increasingly considered the better solution. Google 7/10 Perplexity 8/10 Prompt: What are the primary compliance challenges for a US-based tech startup under the EU's AI Act? This request pushes search to the limits of topicality and obtuse legal documents. Surprisingly, Google's results are very lackluster. The search engine offers up a 57 word March 2025 'featured snippet' from an obscure third-party publication, and that's it. It shows no interest in digging deeper into the topic for the user. Yet again Perplexity tries harder. We're talking 600 words set in a beautiful bullet point format, running through the main challenges and issues surrounding compliance. Along with 9 easily accessible sources and a handful of related subject matter links. Masterful. Google 2/10 Perplexity 8/10 Prompt: What does the history and potential future of blockchain and cryptocurrency look like? This prompt clearly demonstrates why Google's AI Overview is unfortunately not really ready for prime time. The original prompt was something like 'explain cryptocurrency to a fifth grader', but when tested Google couldn't handle it and served up a lame Quora snippet. It's only when we changed the prompt to this one that AI Overview kicked into action, and delivered a reasonable result. It's obvious there's not that much AI involved in AI Overview yet. Interestingly though, this was probably Google's best result. We got 400 words of densely packed information covering the topic clearly and succinctly. Perplexity was also good, providing 600 words and a nice table. Not much to choose between the two then. Google 8/10 Perplexity 8/10 Prompt: What kind of cat is this? For the final prompt we thought we'd go with something a little more exotic. Both search platforms support image upload, so what better than to upload a friendly looking cat to get some more information? Google takes the uploaded image as a prompt to display a page full of similar images, which aligns with its original image matching search. But a re-prompt of 'what kind of cat is this' then delivered a very short four line answer which, although correct, was not super helpful. Perplexity's response was 246 words, with bullets points, covering coat pattern, fur, and the breed. Even a fun fact (calico cats are almost always female). Engaging and informative. Google 3/10 Perplexity 7/10 The king is dead, long live the king? Based on this showing, the rumors could indeed be true. The mighty Google may in fact be on the way to losing its grip on the world's search traffic. Is this the end of an era? Time will tell. However if there's one thing we've learned over the years, it's never to discount the ability of the Google empire to strike back. Uniquely in the world, the company has the compute power, the data and the legendary AI pedigree to surprise us all. Test Notes. It should be noted that we did not use any of the advanced Perplexity functions, but kept to the basic default service. Which make the results even more impressive. It's also important to recognize the fact that AI can get things wrong. Both services feature disclaimers which stress that users should not assume AI search responses are factually correct. This is an early technology finding its feet, users should take care.
Los Angeles Times
10 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Early humans adapted to extreme habitats. Researchers say it set the stage for global migration
WASHINGTON — Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra. This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published this week in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. 'Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,' said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Though prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn't happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago. 'What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded — why were humans ready this time?' said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago. Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven't found evidence to back that up. This study, whose findings were published Wednesday, took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself. The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there. 'There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,' Hallet said. 'We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.' Though humans had long survived in savannas and forests, they shifted into diverse environments including dense rainforests and arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallet called an 'ecological flexibility that let them succeed.' Although this leap in abilities is impressive, it's important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research. Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe's Neanderthals, he said. The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn't answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today. Larson writes for the Associated Press.
