Japanese start-up aims high to become the lunar FedEx

An intensifying US-China space rivalry and Elon Musk’s ambitious Mars programme have fired up scores of start-ups across the world chasing lucrative contracts, as humans race for resources that could foster life beyond Earth.

Among those is a small Japanese company seeking to make a mark next month with what could be a first for a commercial firm. 

Tokyo-based ispace Inc is scheduled to send a lunar lander as early as November 22, carrying multiple government and commercial payloads, including two rovers. Like Musk’s dream for a Martian colony, the start-up’s grand vision is to build a human settlement on the moon by 2040, but before that, it wants to become the lunar version of FedEx — earning money by ferrying scientific equipment and commercial goods to the moon. 

ispace’s maiden mission will put to the test not just the technological credentials it’s built since its founding in 2010, but also the faith of its backers, one of whom is a former SoftBank Group Corp executive. A lot rides on its success, including a potential initial public offering as early as this fiscal year and a shot at a bigger sliver of an industry pie that Morgan Stanley estimates will triple to $1 trillion in two decades from 2020. 

“There’s a vast market for services like these,” ispace’s founder and CEO, Takeshi Hakamada, 43, said in an interview. “If something goes wrong with this attempt, we can still use the feedback from the failure to boost the quality of the next launch.”

The moon lander mission is part of ispace’s lunar exploration programme called Hakuto-R, which means white rabbit in Japanese. The start-up says it can reduce fuel costs by taking advantage of the moon’s gravity to travel. The downside is it will take as long as five months to reach the moon, compared to the roughly three days it took for the Apollo missions of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Set for launch on a Falcon 9 rocket built by Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, ispace’s moon lander is part of a $73m Nasa contract won by a team led by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Draper. The deal envisages end-to-end delivery services to the far side of the moon under the US Artemis programme.

“The first private lunar lander will be a major milestone for the space industry,” said Caleb Henry, a senior analyst at Quilty Analytics, a US-based research and advisory firm.

ispace’s success will also be critical to Japan’s own space programme as the moon once again becomes the focus of geopolitical intrigue. Nasa is targeting a return this decade with its Artemis, while China and Russia have announced plans for a joint lunar base. Last year, Japan’s Lunar Industry Vision Council urged closer co-operation between state and private sectors to remain competitive in the budding space economy. 

A dozen companies are now developing landers and lunar vehicles, mainly through Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, programme. One leading company in this sector, Masten Space Systems Inc, filed for bankruptcy in July. The firm received a $4.5m bankruptcy auction-opening bid from space-robotics tech developer Astrobotic Technology Inc in August.

Debacles in space programmes aren’t rare, and for its part, ispace has already had a brush with failure. It was one of the finalists in Google’s Lunar XPrize, a $20m award for the first privately funded team to land on the moon, travel 500m and beam high-definition video back to Earth. The competition concluded without a winner, but the teams, including ispace, have persisted with their efforts.

“There are a million ways space missions can go wrong and only one way to go right,” Quilty Analytics’ Henry said, noting it’s hard to predict whether ispace’s launch will be successful. “While this is an exciting field, it remains a difficult business financially and technologically.”

Jumpei Nozaki, ispace’s CFO, is well aware of the risks. In an interview, he stressed that a successful landing is not the only goal and the performance of each and every stage will be assessed. 

Hakamada said he can see the formula for success in Musk’s SpaceX, which has executed projects repeatedly undeterred by setbacks. Now, he is about to face his biggest test when he steps into the space centre to witness the take-off.  

“I was told that your life changes after watching the launch in person,” he said. “It’s going to be an exciting and nervous moment.” 

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
Bloomberg