Moon landing, live: Japanese company iSpace launches Europe's first rover onto the moon.

Second time's the charm. At least that's what the private Japanese company ispace will attempt, attempting a second landing on the Moon with the Resilience spacecraft. The scheduled time for this historic flight, which will culminate if all goes according to plan in Mare Frigoris (Sea of ​​Cold), a basaltic plain in the lunar northern hemisphere, will be 9:17 p.m. Spanish time this Thursday. The feat will be broadcast live [you can follow it on ABC.es above these lines], although preparations will begin an hour before the scheduled time for touchdown on our satellite's surface.

If successful, the mission would erase the bitter taste in ispace's mouth, which experienced its first attempt in April 2023 as a major defeat. At that time, the Hakuto-R spacecraft lost contact with the ground during maneuvers before landing, and shortly afterward accelerated unexpectedly and ended up crashing into the ground.

At the time, Hakuto-R could have become the first Japanese spacecraft to land on the Moon, as well as the first private company in the world to achieve the feat. However, its failure meant that ispace lost both opportunities to make history: in January of last year, the SLIM spacecraft of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency beat it to the punch as the first Japanese spacecraft to land gently—albeit tilted—on the Moon, even surviving the frigid lunar night. And a month later, Odysseus , from the American company Intuitive Machines, was proclaimed the first private probe to conquer our satellite.

Resilience weighs approximately one ton with a full tank and is based on the same Hakuto-R hardware as Mission 1. However, it includes software upgrades that leverage lessons learned from the previous failed landing. Founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said that ispace is poised to make history, building on the experience of Hakuto-R Mission 1: “While the mission achieved significant results, we lost communication with the lander just before touchdown,” Hakamada said in a press conference a couple of days ago. “Since then, we have built on the experience, using it as motivation to move forward with determination. We are now at the dawn of our next attempt at making history.”

If Resilience, which measures 2.3 meters high and 2.6 meters wide, is successful this Thursday, the module will deploy a small rover called Tenacious. This is no ordinary vehicle: it was created by the company's Luxembourg subsidiary (ispace EUROPE SA), which designed, manufactured, and assembled this small, lightweight rover with co-funding from LuxIMPULSE, the Luxembourg National Space Program, managed by the Luxembourg Space Agency and implemented by the European Space Agency (ESA). It will therefore be Europe's first rover on the Moon.

Tenacious features a high-definition front-facing camera and a small scoop for collecting samples. Resilience also includes a water electrolyzer experiment, an algae-based food production module, and a deep space radiation probe from Taiwan that could contribute to the safety of future crewed missions.

Also on board are a commemorative alloy plaque based on the "Universal Century Letter," a fictional document from the popular Japanese science fiction franchise "Gundam"; a UNESCO memory disc preserving linguistic and cultural diversity; and a work of art dubbed "Moonhouse" on board Tenacious.

Resilience launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in January. The rocket also carried another private lunar module, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost , which landed just a month and a half later, on March 2, becoming the second private spacecraft to achieve the feat.

However, Resilience has traveled a much longer route to the Moon. It completed a brief Earth orbital phase, a lunar flyby, and maneuvers in deep space and lunar orbit. All to benefit from gravitational forces and minimize fuel consumption.

The lander entered lunar orbit as planned on May 6. On May 28, Resilience performed an orbital control maneuver: a 10-minute engine burn that placed it in a circular orbit around the Moon, about 100 kilometers above its surface.

Before its final maneuver, the probe—whose launch has ultimately been delayed for more than a year—captured a stunning video of the lunar surface from orbit, showing the numerous craters and complex lunar topography. At a speed of approximately 5,800 km/h (3,600 mph), Resilience has been orbiting the Moon, circling it once every two hours, as it prepares for the big moment.