🚀 Falcon 9 | 🛰 HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Resilience lander & Tenacious micro rover, with Blue Ghost Mission 1 (rideshare)

Launch date: January 15, 2025 00:00 UTC

Payload: HAKUTO-R Mission 2 Resilience lander & Tenacious micro rover, with Blue Ghost Mission 1 (rideshare)

Location: Cape Canaveral, Florida (Falcon 9 launch site; specific pad not stated)

Vehicle: Falcon 9

Japanese company ispace launched the HAKUTO-R Mission 2 ‘Resilience’ lunar lander with its Tenacious rover as a rideshare payload aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on January 15, 2025, along with Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1. After a fuel-efficient trajectory and lunar orbit insertion on May 6, Resilience attempted a landing in Mare Frigoris on June 5, but contact was lost 90 seconds before landing and the mission was declared lost. The mission carried a suite of payloads from international partners, including a miniature house art piece, a soil analysis rover task for NASA, a water electrolyzer, food production experiment, a radiation probe, a commemorative plaque, and a UNESCO language memory disk. Notably, it included the first European-built lunar rover. The article details the mission timeline from launch, trajectory, and lunar orbital insertion to the landing attempt. Additional links provide further community discussion, and a NASA Spaceflight video covers the launch event.