ispace
ispace, inc. (ispace) is a private Japanese lunar exploration company with a vision to extend human presence beyond Earth.
'Expand our Planet, Expand our Future'
The company, which operates in Japan (HQ), Luxembourg and the US, has signed partnerships with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Government of Luxembourg.
ispace raised nearly $95 million (USD) in Series A funding, the largest on record in Japan, which is being used for its first two upcoming lunar missions in 2020 and 2021 with SpaceX.
ispace also managed Team HAKUTO, one of the 5 finalists in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition.
HAKUTO-R: ispace Lunar Exploration Program
About HAKUTO-R
HAKUTO-R is the world’s first private lunar exploration program consisting of multiple missions.
It includes ispace’s first two lunar exploration missions:
For both missions, ispace’s lunar lander and rovers will be carried as secondary payloads on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The program is intended to be technology demonstration, allowing ispace to lay the groundwork for higher-frequency, customer-focused missions.
ispace contracted with SpaceX to carry its spacecraft—its Lunar Lander and Lunar Rovers—as secondary payloads on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Launches for the first and second missions for the HAKUTO-R program will occur in mid-2020 and mid-2021, respectively. ispace is the first lunar exploration company to purchase multiple launches.
■ Takeshi Hakamada, ispace Founder & CEO: “We share the vision with SpaceX of enabling humans to live in space, so we’re very glad they will join us in this first step of our journey.”
■ Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX President & COO: “We are entering a new era in space exploration and SpaceX is proud to have been selected by ispace to launch their first lunar missions. We are looking forward to delivering their innovative spacecraft to the Moon.”
The decision to bring back the “HAKUTO” name—meaning “white rabbit” in Japanese, based on local folklore about a rabbit on the Moon—comes 6 months after the Google Lunar XPRIZE ended. The HAKUTO-R program will be a technology demonstration for ispace. Success criteria for Mission 1 has been defined as an orbit around the Moon, while Mission 2 will perform a soft lunar landing and deployment of rovers to collect data from the lunar surface.
HAKUTO-R Lander Rover moving
The world where the earth and moon become one ecosystem (Mission Statement)
The richer and more sustainable life on Earth has become inadequate without the space infrastructure centered on artificial satellites. Various industries such as communication, agriculture, transportation, finance, environment maintenance and so on depend on space infrastructure. In the future, IoT and automatic driving will develop and the importance of space infrastructure will further increase.
So, how can we construct the space infrastructure sustainability and efficiently?
The key is to utilize space resources.
Our ispace is paying attention to the moon. We will utilize valuable water resources that sleep on the moon to build space infrastructure and spread human living sphere to the universe. And the earth and the moon become one system, the economy centered on the space infrastructure supports the lives of people living on Earth, realizing a sustainable world. This is our ultimate goal. Exploration of water resources in the month that ispace first tackles is the starting point for that goal.
Of course, in order to realize this goal, we need to solve many problems.
Technology is important, but of course it can not be solved.
We need to design from social systems such as finance, law, policy, science, education, environmental conservation. To that end, various stakeholders are interested and participate, and global level collaboration is essential.
Also, we must change the way of space development itself.
Until now space development was a national project. I strongly feel strongly that failure is unacceptable and, therefore, the development speed is greatly slowing down. Meanwhile, start-up companies like us can take risks more boldly and carry out fierce challenges with a sense of speed.
Even in the space industry, a number of start-up breakthroughs are born, and innovation through integration with multiple fields other than space is accelerating. Ispace also actively integrates with various fields, and emphasizes systematic thinking to capture the whole picture and optimize it, we are active.
ispace will contribute to the creation of a space-scale living area that will lead the world with high-quality manufacturing that Japan boasts and cooperative leadership will support. Let's create a world in which the earth and the moon become one ecosystem, and the life on the earth is more prosperous and sustainable development.
Takeshi Hakamada