ispace's recent unsuccessful lunar landing attempt reminds us that while lunar exploration is becoming more diverse and global, the Moon itself remains unforgivingly difficult—which is why now more than ever, collaboration and information sharing are paramount.

Yesterday, like many around the world, our team, joined by members of the Open Lunar community, tuned in to watch the ispace landing attempt. The countdown was incredible—a moment punctuated by the nervous excitement of the team in the Mission Control Center. While the outcome was not the one we had hoped for, we applaud the team for demonstrating resilience—true to the name of the lander. A lander built in Japan, carrying a rover from Luxembourg, operated by people representing nationalities all over the world and a truly global mission.

For a mission that lasted almost five months to be lost in the last few minutes during descent is a sober reminder of the challenges brought by the harsh lunar environment. But this landing shouldn’t be wasted. Now more than ever, it’s critical that we work together to learn from every piece of data we return from the Moon—data that remains sparse and precious.

The lunar surface poses a formidable challenge: its terrain is difficult to resolve, there are no local Positioning, Navigation, or Timing (PNT) services, and high-resolution, up-to-date mapping data is limited—especially at the poles. About half of the robotic Moon missions in the last decade have failed. It can be frustrating to see struggles persist today. But the context has changed: rather than one agency attempting seven landings, a growing number of new actors are launching their first or second attempts. Instead of hard won lessons flowing freely into the next mission, knowledge is often siloed, treated as proprietary by agencies and companies, so potentially avoidable mistakes can resurface. Ispace’s mission was its second landing attempt, and it marks the third lunar landing attempt by a private company this year. Intuitive Machines experienced partial success on its first and second landings, but both required last-minute corrections and narrowly avoided failure. Even the Chandrayaan and Apollo programs faced mission-ending failures. Firefly's first lunar mission was a promising success, but that doesn’t guarantee outcomes in more extreme environments like the lunar South Pole, where harsh surface lighting and deep shadows make landing even more difficult—especially for optical navigation systems like the one Firefly plans to use.

Gone are the days when one state actor monopolized lunar access. A diversifying field is promising—bringing increased innovation through competition and an influx of resources required for the complex problem solving required to decrease risk. But as we see even more missions launching each year, collaboration becomes critical to ensure that tens of millions of dollars of investment and years of work aren’t lost in the final seconds of flight. The more we can share data from these attempts, the more return humanity as a whole makes on these investments.

The Moon is hard, but there is no reason to make it harder. Collaboration requires humility—it means facing the challenge together.

Never Quit the Lunar Quest

Achievements in Moon exploration this year: Notable developments by country or region