Japan's iSpace Resilience lunar landing is on for June 5

Do you remember the ridesharing SpaceX mission back in mid-January, the launch that sent Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience probes to the moon.   Blue Ghost landed on March 2nd at 3:34 AM ET, making Firefly Aerospace the first private company in world history to achieve that.  Unlike Blue Ghost, Resilience followed a "low energy transfer" path to reach the moon, which added months to the journey

We knew Blue Ghost was only going to operate for one lunar day, but it was still a little surprising to say goodnight and goodbye to Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Sunday evening after lunar sunset at its landing site on the Mare Crisium Sunday evening the 16th (EST).  

Because of Resilience's lower energy trajectory to the moon, it didn't arrive in lunar orbit until May 6 and is finally ready for its landing attempt, set for tomorrow, June 5th.  The tricky part, as that Space.com article shows, is that we don't know exactly when.  

Currently, ispace's Resilience moon lander is scheduled to land on Thursday, June 5, at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT), though it will be 4:17 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Friday, June 6, at touchdown time. That landing time, announced in a June 4 update, is about 7 minutes earlier than ispace's earlier target of 3:24 p.m EDT (1924 GMT),. 
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The prime landing spot is in the middle of Mare Frigoris, or the "Sea of Cold," on the near side of the moon's northern hemisphere. If ispace decides to use a backup landing site (there are three in all), those attempts would occur on different days and times.

We all know the Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and this is just a bit more of an example.  Yes the daylight is 14 Earth days long, but the mission depends on getting as much use out of those hours as possible. 

 

ispace produced this photo which shows the landing spots. The primary target is marked by a red dot near the right edge of the photo near where a pair of latitude and longitude lines intersect.  If you look carefully right to left, you'll see three other darker red dots marked MFLZ-BU1 through BU3.  While I have no idea what MFLZ stands for, I'm pretty confident the BU is for Back Up.  Unless MFLZ is supposed to be read by Samuel L Jackson.  

The landing will be carried on ispace's YouTube Channel - that link is the English version.  They will also carry it in Japanese but I assume the vast majority of my readers will be more interested in English. 

The livestreams will begin at 2:10 p.m. EDT (1810 GMT/3:10 a.m. JST on June 6) with the landing itself targeted for 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT; 4:17 a.m. JST on June 6).

It sounds like an interesting mission.  In addition to a Water Electrolyzer Experiment that will test technology to generate oxygen and hydrogen from moon water, and an Algae-based food production module that will experiment with growing algae on the moon, Resilience is carrying a microrover called Tenacious, which was built by ispace's European subsidiary.  If all goes well, the rover will be deployed on the surface to test its camera and sample-collection shovel for future sample return missions.  For reasons I just don't understand, Tenacious will carry a miniature work of art: a tiny model called "Moonhouse," a small red house designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, as part of a cultural program for the mission.