A Japanese spacecraft failed in its Moon landing attempt, a new European telescope designed to detect dangerous asteroids, and new research questions whether a galactic collision is truly inevitable. This Week in Space
Second Failure
On June 5, the Japanese company iSpace failed in its attempt to land a spacecraft on the Moon. The unmanned lander, named Resilience, was scheduled to touch down in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region, located in the northern part of the Moon’s near side. However, roughly 90 seconds before landing, mission control in Japan lost contact with the spacecraft. About twenty minutes after the planned touchdown, the company announced that its engineers had not yet been able to re-establish communication.
This marked iSpace’s second failed lunar landing. The company’s first attempt, in April 2023, ended in a crash during landing - likely due to a computer malfunction—just moments before what could have been the first successful soft landing by a private spacecraft on the Moon.
Resilience was launched in January aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, sharing the ride with Blue Ghost, another private lander developed by U.S.-based Firefly Aerospace. While Firefly opted for a faster, more direct route to the Moon and completed a successful landing in March, iSpace chose a slower but more fuel-efficient trajectory, based on gradually expanding Earth orbits. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit about a month prior to the landing attempt, during which the company completed its landing preparations.
Weighing approximately 340 kilograms, Resilience carried a suite of experiments and scientific instruments from Japanese companies and universities. Its most notable payload was Tenacious, a 5-kilogram autonomous lunar rover developed by iSpace’s European branch in Luxembourg. The rover was designed to explore the landing site, capture images, collect soil samples, and deploy a miniature model of a lunar habitat designed by a Swedish artist.
Despite this setback, iSpace remains undeterred. The company plans to launch another lunar lander in 2026, followed by a further mission in 2027. Additionally, iSpace is among several companies recently selected by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to develop a satellite that will orbit the Moon and map ice deposits that could enable the production of water and oxygen on-site on future lunar missions.
Wide-Field Defense
A new telescope operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) has begun operations in Italy. Its mission: to scan the skies for asteroids and comets that could pose a threat to Earth. Officially named NEOSTEL (Near Earth Object Survey Telescope), the instrument is more widely known as FLYEYE, a nickname inspired by its unique design, which mimics the structure and function of an insect’s compound eye.
FLYEYE is equipped with a one-meter primary mirror that efficiently collects light and splits it into 16 channels, each connected to a high-sensitivity camera. This advanced setup allows the telescope to detect even very faint objects as small as a few dozen meters across.
The system allows for high-sensitivity imaging across wide areas of the sky. FLYEYE’s 45-square-degree field of view is about 200 times larger than the apparent size of the full Moon, enabling it to scan nearly the entire visible sky from its location each night. Image processing is fully automated, with potential findings reviewed by a human astronomer for verification. Confirmed detections are then forwarded to ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre, and details of newly identified objects are reported to the IAU Minor Planet Center, the international authority for tracking potentially hazardous space objects.
After completing its initial testing phase at the production site in Matera, southern Italy, the telescope will be relocated to the Monte Mufara Observatory in Sicily. In the future, three additional FLYEYE telescopes are expected to join the network at sites around the world, enabling comprehensive sky coverage for the detection and early warning of potential Earth-impact threats.
“The earlier we spot potentially hazardous asteroids, the more time we have to assess them and, if necessary, prepare a response,” said Richard Moissl, Head of ESA’s Planetary Defense Office. “ESA’s Flyeye telescopes will be an early-warning system, and their discoveries will be shared with the global planetary defence community.”
Will We Manage to Avoid a Collision?
Just over a century ago, astronomers realized that the Andromeda Nebula wasn’t merely a faint smudge on the outskirts of the Milky Way, but a massive galaxy in its own right—located far beyond our own. Although the Milky Way and Andromeda remain separated by vast distances, they are racing toward each other at high speed. For decades, astrophysicists believed that a collision between the two was inevitable—expected to occur in about 4.5 billion years. Or at least, that was the prevailing view.
A study published last week, analyzing data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia Space Telescope, suggests that such a collision is far from certain. In fact, based on the new data, the researchers calculated that there’s only a 50 percent chance the two galaxies will collide within the next 10 billion years.
A new study, published last week and based on data from the Hubble and Gaia space telescopes, suggests that a head-on collision may not be certain after all. According to the researchers, there's only a 50 percent chance that the two galaxies will collide within the next 10 billion years.
“We have the most comprehensive study of this problem today that actually folds in all the observational uncertainties,” said Till Sawala of the University of Helsinki, who led the study alongside physicists from the UK, France, and Australia. The team examined 22 variables expected to influence galactic motion, tracked their changes over recent years using space telescope observations, and ran computer simulations to model possible scenarios.
“Because there are so many variables that each have their errors, that accumulates to rather large uncertainty about the outcome, leading to the conclusion that the chance of a direct collision is only 50% within the next 10 billion years,” Sawala explained. "The Milky Way and Andromeda alone would remain in the same plane as they orbit each other, but this doesn't mean they need to crash. They could still go past each other.”
Further complicating the calculations are the satellite galaxies orbiting each of the two giants. The Milky Way is influenced by the Large Magellanic Cloud, while Andromeda has M33 as its satellite galaxy companion. M33 exerts a slight gravitational pull on Andromeda, nudging it toward a potential collision, while the Magellanic Cloud pulls the Milky Way away from a collision. This gravitational tug-of-war could ultimately prevent the two galaxies from ever meeting.
In half of the simulations, the galaxies miss each other by more than 500,000 light-years—roughly five times the diameter of the Milky Way. They would then continue orbiting one another, potentially crossing paths again and eventually colliding, but only after many additional billions of years.
If a collision does occur, it could trigger the formation of new stars while accelerating the demise of existing ones. A particularly strong impact might even eject our Sun from its current orbit, sending it into a different region of the galaxy. Still, this scenario is unlikely to concern us directly: the Sun is expected to run out of fuel and expand into a red giant in about 5 billion years—long before any galactic encounter. Once we’ve made it past that milestone, then we can start worrying about galactic collisions.
A collision isn’t guaranteed. Simulation showing the Milky Way and Andromeda at a distance of half a million light-years (right), where their outer edges may interact, and at a safer distance of one million light-years. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Till Sawala (University of Helsinki), DSS, J. DePasquale (STScI)