A potentially historic moment in commercial space exploration is nearing as a private Japanese lunar lander gets set to touch down on the moon's surface. CBS News space consultant William Harwood has the latest.

Tokyo

Japanese company iSpace is preparing for its second attempt to land a commercial spacecraft on the moon, after its first mission ended in failure due to a sensor error that caused the lander to run out of fuel and crash. This new mission, using a spacecraft called Resilience, aims to become the first controlled moon landing by a commercial company outside the United States.

The mission highlights the increasing role of private companies in lunar exploration, with iSpace seeking to carry experiments and payloads for governments and universities. The company has implemented additional safeguards and testing based on lessons learned from its previous attempt, and the landing will be managed autonomously by the lander's onboard computer.

Japan prepares for second moon landing attempt

All right, so in the next few hours, Japan is set to make national history as it attempts its second ever lunar landing. Its first try ended in a failure back in 2023. The Japanese startup called iSpace hopes to become the first commercial company not from the U.S. to make a controlled moon landing. Let's bring in CBS News space consultant Bill Harwood for us for much more on the story. Bill, just how significant is this latest landing attempt? Well, you know, anytime a private company attempts to land on the moon, it's fairly significant. I mean, only one other company's ever done that. In the United States, it was Austin-based Firefly Aerospace earlier this year successfully put their Blue Ghost lander on the moon. Interestingly enough, this spacecraft called Resilience was launched on the same rocket, Falcon 9 rocket along with Blue Ghost, but it took a longer route to the moon and just now getting here. It is significant because they want to open up the moon to commercial use and exploitation. They're hoping that NASA's Artemis program will kind of spur the development of private sector infrastructure on and around the moon. And iSpace certainly wants to capitalize on that, carrying experiments and payloads for everything from governments to universities to the surface of the moon. So if they can pull it off, it's a big deal for them. So as we said earlier, their first landing or their first attempt didn't work out so well for them. So how did iSpace adjust their first landing? And hopefully, I guess the hope is to do well this time around. What was the adjustment they made from the first time? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is a mission that's built on lessons learned. During their initial landing attempt a couple of years ago, there was a sensor error, an altitude sensor error, I believe it was. But anyway, the bottom line is the spacecraft ran out of fuel at a higher altitude and so it crashed down to the surface. They called it a hard landing, but to you and me, it was a crash landing. But they had a lot of telemetry from that mission. They were able to understand exactly what went wrong. And for this spacecraft, they've gone back and beefed up those systems, added additional safeguards, carried out additional testing, and they're reasonably confident they can pull it off this time around. Fingers crossed. Yeah, fingers crossed for them. Bill, this is an important question because I'm curious too because we understand the lander entered the lunar orbit basically earlier this week, but how long does it actually take to land and how careful do they have to be as they try to touch down? I'll answer your last question first. Very, very careful. You know, the thing to remember about a moon landing is you can't control it in real time from Earth. So the computer on the spacecraft has to be properly programmed to take its sensor data, altitude, velocity, fuel levels, all those things, and pin them together to find the exact right landing site and to reach the surface successfully. It's all on the lander at this point. Once they commit to firing the braking rockets to drop out of orbit, then it's all on the lander. I don't have a good time for the time it'll take to drop from that orbit. Right now, they're at an altitude of about 62 miles, circular orbit. It won't take long. This will be in a range of several minutes, tens of minutes, and then they'll be down one way or the other. So we'll be following along in real time as I'm sure everybody else will at CBS and elsewhere. We'll see how it goes, but it should be exciting. Yeah, very exciting. Fingers crossed for them. And thank you, Bill, for helping us make sense of how all of this works. Appreciate your time today. Oh, sure.

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