A private lunar lander from Japan is circling the moon with another month to go before it attempts a touchdown.
Tokyo-based ispace said on Wednesday morning its Resilience lander had entered lunar orbit.
“The countdown to lunar landing has now officially begun,” the company said in a statement.
SpaceX launched Resilience with US-based Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander in January.
Firefly got there first in March, becoming the first private outfit to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over.
Another American company, Intuitive Machines, landed a spacecraft on the moon a few days later, but it ended up sideways in a crater.
Now ispace is targeting the first week of June for Resilience’s touchdown. The company’s first lander crashed into the moon in 2023.
The lander holds a mini rover equipped with a scoop to gather lunar dirt for analysis as well as other experiments.
