A private Japanese space company will try to land an uncrewed robotic spacecraft on the moon and deliver a rover to its surface today, after a failed attempt in April 2023.
Landing on the moon remains onerous — demonstrated by numerous flopped landings. Though Firefly Aerospace succeeded in landing in March, another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, didn’t fare as well, ending up on its side in a crater less than a week later.
Tokyo company ispace has been waiting for this day for the so-called Hakuto-R mission for roughly 4.5 months. Its spacecraft, Resilience, was one of two spacecraft headed to the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in mid-January. Its travel companion, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, took a faster route and touched down on the surface March 2. Though Firefly wasn’t the trailblazer — the first private robotic lander to make the journey to the surface happened last year — it was the first to get its lander there upright and in one piece.
But ispace’s lander has taken a longer journey to save on fuel — and the company knows all too well how crucial that is: After a post-flight investigation, the company said its first lander crashed because it ran out of fuel on the way down, unable to control its landing.
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Here’s how to watch the second-chance event.
SEE ALSO:
Private spacecraft circling moon snaps photo with strange optical illusion
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The Hakuto-R mission is gearing up for a landing near the center of Mare Frigoris, aka the Sea of Cold, at 3:17 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 5 (that’s 4:24 a.m. on June 6 in Japan).
Livestream coverage will begin about one hour earlier, at 2:10 p.m. ET, with English translation.
The public can also watch on X, the social platform owned by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Or you can bookmark this story and come back here to watch the broadcast below:
Landing on the moon is difficult because of its exosphere, which provides virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. What’s more, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. Engineers have to compensate for those challenges from 239,000 miles away.
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![New Google commercial imagines a Declaration of Independence written with help from AI | TechCrunch
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.
Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google’s “help me visualize” AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III’s document access request.
The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point, Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over beers?”), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google commercial in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one shies away from any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eye has the uncanny glow of AI-generated video.
While viewer comments on YouTube and Instagram appear to be mostly positive, you may not be surprised to learn that the response on Bluesky has been far more critical. Posters declared the commercial “cringey” and “stunningly tone deaf,” and the AI angle was the biggest target — even as many users, including historian Angus Johnston, noted that it’s “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”
“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it’s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,” Johnston said.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RjZY-rSsc[/embed]
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Google #commercial #imagines #Declaration #Independence #written #TechCrunchgemini,Google](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/google-declaration-of-independence.jpg?w=1200&ssl=1 "New Google commercial imagines a Declaration of Independence written with help from AI | TechCrunch
Two hundred and fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a new commercial from Google asks: What if the Founding Fathers had access to Google Workspace?
With the tagline “Group project, but make it 1776,” the ad depicts a largely unseen Thomas Jefferson mid-draft when he gets a nagging text from Ben Franklin, leading to a very Google-centric collaboration process. Edits are suggested in Google Docs, a meeting gets scheduled in Google Calendar and conducted remotely via Google Meet (with every single attendee apparently turning their camera off?), then the whole thing is finalized with e-signatures; cue the fireworks.
Of course, since this is an ad from a tech company in the year 2026, AI has a role to play. The fictionalized founders use Google’s “help me visualize” AI tool to try out different animals on the national seal, Gemini takes notes on the meeting, and the founders also ask the chatbot for advice before declining King George III’s document access request.
The whole thing is very tongue-in-cheek (at one point, Sam Adams asks, “Can we settle this over beers?”), and the AI evangelism is relatively discreet when compared to many other recent ads. And unlike that infamous Google commercial in which a father uses Gemini to write a fan letter for his daughter, this one shies away from any suggestion that the actual text of the Declaration of Independence would be improved with AI. Perhaps the most AI-forward element of the ad is the footage itself, which to my eye has the uncanny glow of AI-generated video.
While viewer comments on YouTube and Instagram appear to be mostly positive, you may not be surprised to learn that the response on Bluesky has been far more critical. Posters declared the commercial “cringey” and “stunningly tone deaf,” and the AI angle was the biggest target — even as many users, including historian Angus Johnston, noted that it’s “amazing how little of this is actually AI.”
“Even in a corny fantasy joke, it’s impossible to make the case that AI is a useful tool for political organizing, writing, or human collaboration,” Johnston said.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RjZY-rSsc[/embed]
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Google #commercial #imagines #Declaration #Independence #written #TechCrunchgemini,Google")
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