Europe

First European-Made Lunar Rover Crashes into Moon

JUN 5 2025·Updated JUN 9 2025

Story

Above: Models of the lunar lander Resilience (centre, L) and the lunar rover Tenacious (centre, R) at the Moon landing event venue in Tokyo on June 6, 2025. Image credit: Kazuhiro Nogi/Contributor/AFP via Getty Images

The Facts

Japan aborted its mission to achieve the country's first soft landing on the Moon after Tokyo-based company ispace lost contact with its unmanned Resilience spacecraft on Friday.
Ispace
France 24
Breitbart
In a statement, ispace said "the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface," adding "it is unlikely that communication with the lander will be restored," so "it has been decided to conclude the mission."
Ispace
The Resilience carried several high-profile payloads, including the first European-made lunar rover, Tenacious, and touched down in the Mare Frigoris on Thursday at 3:17 p.m. EDT.
CBS News
Breitbart
Space
Tenacious, designed and built by Luxembourg-based ispace EUROPE, carried a piece of art from Swedish artist Mikael Genberg and a water electrolyzer.
Sky News
The Telegraph
The rover, weighing just 11 pounds (5 kilograms), was going in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple of centimeters) per second and was expected to be operational throughout the two-week mission.
Sky News
Autoevolution
New York Post
ispace's first lander, the Hakuto-R spacecraft, crash-landed in 2023 after its software wrongly threw out correct altitude data, which led to the failed landing attempt. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba stated that "Expectations for ispace will not waver" in a post on X.
CNN
SpaceNews
Dw.Com

Sources Split

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RIGHT

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The Spin

Narrative A

Space exploration is a famously difficult enterprise, and even if the mission is unsuccessful, ispace deserves credit for trying to push the limits of what we are capable of. The Tenacious Rover is a bold design, lighter and smaller than ever, enabling even greater innovations down the road.

Ispace

New York Post

Narrative B

ispace has yet to succeed in its lunar endeavors and is likely going to face some serious troubles down the road. Unlike the Bezos-backed Blue Origin, for instance, ispace is a startup without vast cash reserves and has admitted it cannot afford a succession of failures. Private space exploration still faces a rocky road ahead.