Ispace has gone out of its way to make clear that it’s not giving up. The motto underpinning today’s mission was “never quit the lunar quest.” And by all accounts, the company has every intention of sticking with these moon missions until they succeed.

During a news conference hours after the landing attempt, Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada compared Ispace to SpaceX.

“SpaceX has also failed several times, but now SpaceX occupies the launching market,” Hakamada said.

In the earliest days of the Elon Musk-run company, there were several brutal failures of the company’s first rocket, the Falcon 1. It was only on the fourth try, when the company was on the brink of bankruptcy, that SpaceX successfully sent one of its launch vehicles to orbit in 2008.

Before today’s landing attempt, Ispace chief financial officer Jumpei Nozaki told CNN that the company already has the money locked down for a third try at a lunar touchdown. And that likely would not be affected by a failure during Resilience’s mission.

The company is working with US-based company Draper, which has its roots in NASA’s Apollo program, on a lander called Apex 1.0. That vehicle is slated to travel to the far side of the moon as soon as 2027.

Until then, Ispace has its work cut out for it. Hakamada said during the news briefing he will need to work to regain the trust of investors, and the company will need to deeply investigate what went wrong on the Resilience mission to ensure similar issues don’t plague Apex 1.0.

“This is our second failure, and about these results, we have to really take it seriously,” Hakamada said in translated remarks.