Like many visionaries before them, ispace dreamed of exploring the Moon’s surface. Unlike those other visionaries, ispace has already been there. Their first mission to the lunar surface succeeded in sending a privately built craft deeper into space than ever before. But for the Tokyo, Japan company, reaching the surface is just the first step in a grand vision for space exploration.
THE GOOGLE LUNAR XPRIZE
The company began in 2010 as part of competitor Team Hakuto in the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE. This competition challenged teams to soft land on the Moon, travel across its surface, and transmit messages back to Earth. XPRIZE hoped that this competition, which took place from 2007 to 2018, would spur affordable access to the Moon, and inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, space explorers, and adventurers to enter STEM fields.
ISPACE’S MISSIONS AND THE LUNAR ECONOMY
While the Google Lunar XPRIZE ended in 2018 without a grand prize winner, ispace continued their work to reach the Moon’s surface after the competition’s close, focusing on developing future commercial lunar missions. Using their notoriety as a finalist team, and the winner of the competition’s milestone prize, ispace successfully raised more than $90M after the competition to continue development of their next-generation space technology, including landers and rovers, with the goal of achieving a successful Moon landing.
ISPACE’S FIRST LUNAR MISSION: HAKUTO-R MISSION 1
In 2022, ispace launched its first mission to the Moon, the Hakuto-R Mission 1, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission successfully completed an impressive eight out of ten mission milestones before the company lost communication with the lander, causing it to crash land into the lunar surface on its final descent.
ISPACE’S NEXT LUNAR MISSION: HAKUTO-R MISSION 2
The Hakuto-R Mission 2 is scheduled for lunar landing on June 6, 2025 and builds upon the many successes of their first mission. The mission will include the Resilience lunar lander and Tenacious micro rover.
As part of their effort to keep costs low, ispace’s landers can carry multiple payloads to serve a diverse market of international scientists, government agencies, and commercial organizations. With the Hakuto-R Mission 2, ispace’s lander will carry water electrolyzer equipment, a deep space radiation probe, and the Tenacious micro rover will collect lunar regolith, Moon soil, for delivery to NASA.
This work will support ispace’s ongoing support for NASA’s Artemis program as well as ispace’s efforts to establish a lunar economy and space infrastructure capable of supporting human life off of planet Earth, including future lunar bases.
ISPACE AND THE PRIVATE SPACE INDUSTRY
ispace has continued to raise support for the private space industry, including working with the Japanese government to launch a $940M fund to foster private space companies in Japan in 2018. This initiative also includes pathways for technical cooperation between private companies and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). While the Google Lunar XPRIZE ended without a winner, it succeeded in its mission to rekindle humanity’s interest in exploring the Moon and spurring affordable access to outer space and its surface.
Watch ispace share their story in our XPRIZE Innovators series, and discover how you can get involved in competitions that change the world at xprize.org.
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