ispace Inc. is a private Japanese company developing

robotic spacecraft A robotic spacecraft is an uncrewed spacecraft, usually under telerobotic control. A robotic spacecraft designed to make scientific research measurements is often called a space probe. Many space missions are more suited to telerobotic rather t ...

technologies to build landers and rovers to compete for both transportation and exploration mission contracts from space agencies and private industry. ispace will enable clients who may want to discover, map, and use the natural

lunar resources The Moon bears substantial natural resources which could be exploited in the future. Potential lunar resources may encompass processable materials such as volatiles and minerals, along with geologic structures such as lava tubes that together, m ...

. From 2013 to 2018, ispace was the owner and operator of the

Hakuto Announcement: New Team Name i ...

team that competed in

Google Lunar X Prize The Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, was a 2007–2018 inducement prize space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. The challenge called for privately funded teams to be th ...

(GLXP). The team developed a lunar rover named ''Sorato''. ispace is currently headquartered in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, with offices in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

.Luxembourg and ispace, a Tokyo-Based Lunar Robotic ExplorationCompany, Sign MoU to Co-Operate within the Spaceresources.lu Initiative
''Business Wire'' Released by the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy 2 March 2017 The company's founder and CEO is Takeshi Hakamada.

History

Water Detected at High Latitudes on the Moon

Although ispace is now independent, it began as a partner of a European organization called White Label Space. White Label Space (WLS) was an international team of space engineers that was founded in 2008 to compete in the

, for a grand prize of US$20 million to send a spacecraft to the Moon's surface, and have it travel 500 meters. WLS was headquartered in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

and led by Steve Allen. The European side aimed to develop the team's lunar lander while the Japanese group consisting of

Tohoku University , or is a Japanese national university located in Sendai, Miyagi in the Tōhoku Region, Japan. It is informally referred to as . Established in 1907, it was the third Imperial University in Japan and among the first three Designated National ...

Space Robotics Lab and led by Kazuya Yoshida was to develop a rover. In 2010, White Label Space Japan LLC, the predecessor of ispace was founded by Takeshi Hakamada to manage the commercial and technical aspect of the Japanese group. On 30 January 2013, when the European teammates ceased substantial involvement in the prize, the Japan-based members decided to continue the work, and WLS transferred the GLXP participation right to White Label Space Japan LLC. Steve Allen, WLS's leader was succeeded by Takeshi Hakamada. In May 2013, the team's parent company, White Label Space Japan changed its name to ispace, while the GLXP team was renamed "Hakuto" on 15 July of the same year. Team Hakuto did not succeed in undertaking a lunar mission during the GLXP, but following the cessation of the competition, ispace continued its lunar exploration plans and, in 2018, the company succeeded in raising over US$90 million in private funding to develop its own lunar lander in addition to continuing its work on lunar rovers. By September 2018, ispace planned to test their systems by orbiting around the Moon but not land on it. The company signed up for two launches on

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launcher, and a satellite communications corporation headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the stated goal of ...

Falcon 9 Falcon 9 is a partially reusable medium lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo and crew into Earth orbit, produced by American aerospace company SpaceX. The rocket has two stages. The first (booster) stage carries the second stage and payl ...

rockets, to take place in 2020 and 2021. ispace is also developing a mission concept called ''Polar Ice Explorer'' that would prospect for

on a region near the

lunar south pole The lunar south pole is the southernmost point on the Moon, at 90°S. It is of special interest to scientists because of the occurrence of water ice in permanently shadowed areas around it. The lunar south pole region features craters that ar ...

. On 10 October 2018, an industry team formed by

Draper Laboratory Draper Laboratory is an American non-profit research and development organization, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; its official name is The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc (sometimes abbreviated as CSDL). The laboratory specialize ...

, along with ispace,

General Atomics General Atomics is an American energy and defense corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, specializing in research and technology development. This includes physics research in support of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion energy. The ...

, and

Spaceflight Industries Spaceflight Industries, Inc. is an American private aerospace company based out of Herndon, Virginia that specializes in geospatial intelligence services. It sold its satellite rideshare business, Spaceflight, Inc., in June 2020. Spaceflight ...

submitted a proposal for a commercial lunar lander to

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

Commercial Lunar Payload Services Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is a NASA program to contract transportation services able to send small robotic landers and rovers to the Moon's south polar region mostly with the goals of scouting for lunar resources, testing in sit ...

Program. According to Draper, ispace will serve as the team's design agent. On 21 July 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded a CLPS contract to Draper Laboratories and the team.

Hakuto-R program

The long-term strategy of ispace is to build landers and rovers to compete for both transportation and exploration mission contracts from space agencies and private industry. NASA aims at contracting private industries to scout and mine

lunar water Lunar water is water that is present on the Moon. Diffuse water molecules can persist at the Moon's sunlit surface, as discovered by NASA's SOFIA observatory in 2020. Gradually water vapor is decomposed by sunlight, leaving hydrogen and oxyg ...

and other

to support a future Moon-based infrastructure.They want moon landings to be a commercial reality — and that's just the start
Time Romero, ''Tech in Asia'' August 2018 The funding for the first two missions was originally secured from a consortium of Japanese funds and companies. In 2018, ispace signed a working agreement with Draper to serve as the team's design agent, which brought about significant changes. In August 2019, ispace announced a restructuring of its lunar program, now called Hakuto-R, in light of rapid increases in customer demand for payload delivery services in the lunar exploration industry, especially from the recent

(CLPS) contract awarded to Draper and its partners, including ispace. A significant change was the elimination of the technology demonstration orbiter mission in 2020 in favor of moving more quickly toward a demonstration of landing capabilities. Hakuto-R Mission 1 is a lunar lander carrying the

Emirates Lunar Mission The Emirates Lunar Mission ( ar, مشروع الإمارات لاستكشاف القمر) is the first mission to the Moon from the United Arab Emirates. The mission by Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) is sending a lunar rover named ''Ras ...

rover ''Rashid'' in a partnership with the

Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC; ar, مركز محمد بن راشد للفضاء, markaz Muḥammad bin Rāshid lil-faḍāʾ), is a Dubai government organisation working on the UAE space programme, which includes various space sa ...

(MBRSC), along with

Tomy is a Japanese entertainment company that makes children's toys and merchandise. It was created from a merger on March 1st 2006 of two companies: Tomy (founded in 1924 as Tomiyama, changing the name to Tomy in 1963) and long-time rival Tak ...

and

JAXA The is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orb ...

's ''SORA-Q'' transformable lunar robot. Hakuto-R Mission 1 houses another payload, that is, a music disc featuring the song ‘SORATO’ by the Japanese rock band

Sakanaction , stylised as sakanaction, are a Japanese rock band from Sapporo, Hokkaido. Their music is a fusion of alternative rock, electronic, pop, and new wave styles. The band consists of five members: Ichiro Yamaguchi, Motoharu Iwadera, Ami Kusakari, ...

. The song was initially released in 2018 as a part of the Team

Hakuto Announcement: New Team Name i ...

campaign for the

Google Lunar XPRIZE The Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP), sometimes referred to as Moon 2.0, was a 2007–2018 inducement prize space competition organized by the X Prize Foundation, and sponsored by Google. The challenge called for privately funded teams to be th ...

Launches

Hakuto-R Mission 1 was launched on 11 December 2022 at 07:38 UTC on a

Falcon 9 Block 5 Falcon 9 Block 5 is a Reusable launch system#Partial reusable launch systems, partially reusable two-stage-to-orbit medium-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured in the United States by SpaceX. It is the fifth version of Falcon 9 Full Thr ...

rocket, along with

and NASA's

Lunar Flashlight Lunar Flashlight is a low-cost CubeSat lunar orbiter mission to explore, locate, and estimate size and composition of water ice deposits on the Moon for future exploitation by robots or humans. The spacecraft, of the 6U CubeSat format, w ...

spacecraft. Hakuto-R Mission 2, a lunar lander and

rover Rover may refer to: People * Constance Rover (1910–2005), English historian * Jolanda de Rover (born 1963), Dutch swimmer * Rover Thomas (c. 1920–1998), Indigenous Australian artist Places * Rover, Arkansas, US * Rover, Missouri, US * ...

, is scheduled for launch in 2024.

Mission 3 and beyond

ispace Mission 3 is expected to launch in 2024. Missions 3 through 9 aim to establish ispace's lunar lander as a high-frequency cost-effective transportation system, while Mission 10 and beyond will begin the construction of an "industrial platform" to enable the development of

resources.

References

External links