Japan has entered the commercial space race, by way of the Tokyo-based space startup ispace, inc. Following are details about the company in the run-up to its 2022 maiden mission in partnership with SpaceX: the launch of a lunar lander – the first by a commercial space company.
ispace M1 Mission: On Sunday, December 11 at 2:38 a.m. ET, SpaceX launched ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Lunar Flashlight to a lunar transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. This was the fifth launch and landing of this Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously launched SES-22 and three Starlink missions.
An intensifying US-China space rivalry and Elon Musk’s ambitious Mars program have fired up scores of startups 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 as early as this month with what could be a first for a commercial firm. Tokyo-based ispace Inc. is scheduled to send a lunar lander earliest by Nov. 22 [2022], carrying multiple government and commercial payloads, including two rovers.
Like Musk’s dream for a Martian colony, the startup’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.
Currently, a dozen companies are developing landers and lunar vehicles, mainly through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program. One leading company in this sector, Masten Space Systems Inc., filed for bankruptcy in July. The firm received a $4.5 million bankruptcy auction-opening bid from space robotics tech developer Astrobotic Technology Inc. in August
Debacles in space programs 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 $20 million award for the first privately funded team to land on the moon, travel 500 meters (1,640 feet) 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.”
“There’s a vast market for services like these,” ispace’s founder and Chief Executive Officer 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.” (1)
“Ispace’s lander is part of a $73 million NASA contract…to provide end-to-end delivery services under the US Artemis moon program.”
A Japanese lunar lander carrying two rovers and other payload lifted off via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket…in a bid to become the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon.
The launch of Tokyo-based ispace Inc.’s Hakuto-R lander from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida followed two postponements. Originally scheduled for late November, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. had stood down twice for additional pre-flight rocket checks.
The Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander — Japan’s first-ever lunar lander to launch — will take a circuitous path to the moon and is expected to touch down inside the Atlas crater around the end of April.
It carries two rovers — one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Rashid rover from the United Arab Emirates — as well as an experimental solid-state battery from NGK Spark Plug Co., a music disc containing the song SORATO played by Japanese rock band Sakanaction and other cargo.
The escalating US-China space rivalry and Elon Musk’s ambitious Mars program have spurred startups around the world to chase new contracts for tapping resources on the lunar surface and further out in space.
Like Musk’s goal to build a colony on Mars, ispace wants to build a human settlement of about 1,000 people on the moon by 2040, and the company plans to ferry equipment to the moon to make it a habitable commercial center.
Ispace’s lander is part of a $73 million NASA contractwon by a team led by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Draper to provide end-to-end delivery services under the US Artemis moon program.
The same rocket also launched the NASA probe Lunar Flashlight on a mission to look for ice in craters on the moon. (2)
“…possibly becoming the first cargo successfully carried to the lunar surface by a private company.”
SpaceX has already launched its Falcon 9 rocket more than 50 times this year. NASA’s Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight that is a precursor to future astronaut missions, returned to Earth after orbiting the moon. CAPSTONE, a small NASA-sponsored CubeSat, is still orbiting the moon after being launched in June. A robotic South Korean orbiter, Danuri, was launched to the moon in August.
But the lunar lander that was carried by a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla…is not a NASA mission. Instead, known as M1, it is from a small Japanese company, Ispace. The payloads on M1 include a rover from the United Arab Emirates and a small two-wheeled Transformers-like robot for the Japanese space agency.
While the mission lifted off at 2:38 a.m. Eastern time, you’ll have to wait until April to see if these robotic explorers make it there, possibly becoming the first cargo successfully carried to the lunar surface by a private company.
Why will it take Ispace so long to get to the moon?
Much like some other recent moon missions, M1 is taking a circuitous, energy-efficient trip to the moon and will not land, in the Atlas Crater in the Northern Hemisphere of the moon, until late April. The fuel-efficient trajectory allows the mission to pack in more payload and carry less fuel.
What are the moon’s other recent visitors?
As part of the Artemis I mission, NASA’s Orion spacecraft traveled to, then orbited, the moon. It returned to Earth later on Sunday, with a splashdown into the Pacific Ocean. A small NASA-financed mission called CAPSTONE also arrived recently to explore an orbit in which NASA plans to build a lunar outpost where astronauts will stop on the way to the moon.
Are other companies attempting what Ispace is doing?
A NASA program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, has been looking to send experiments to the surface to the moon. The first two missions, from Intuitive Machines of Houston and Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, plan to launch next year after considerable delays. Intuitive Machines’ lander, which could be launched as early as March, could even beat Ispace to the moon because it’s using a quick six-day trajectory.
Because it is not an American company, Ispace could not directly participate in the NASA program. However, it is part of a team led by Draper Technologies of Cambridge, Mass., that has won a CLPS mission from NASA. That mission is scheduled to be launched in 2025.
And while it hasn’t arrived yet, the moon will get a third new visitor next month. Danuri, a South Korean space probe, was launched in August and is due to enter lunar orbit on Dec. 16. The spacecraft will help the development of technology for future Korean missions, and it also carries scientific instruments to study the moon’s chemical composition and magnetic field. (3)
What Next?
With ispace prepared to integrate the learnings from this maiden mission, even in failure space remains a strong value proposition and business model.
“With the data obtained from the spacecraft, the company will be able to apply “lessons learned” to its next two missions.”
A Japanese company has lost contact with a small robotic spacecraft it was sending to the moon.
Analysis of data from the vehicle suggests it ran out of propellant during its final approach and instead of landing softly crashed into the lunar surface.
After firing its main engine, the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander built by Ispace of Japan dropped out of lunar orbit…the lander, about 7.5 feet tall, was expected to land in Atlas Crater, a 54-mile-wide feature in the northeast quadrant of the near side of the moon.
But after the time of touchdown, no signal was received from the spacecraft. On a live video streamed by the company, a pall of silence enveloped the control room in Tokyo where Ispace engineers, mostly young and from around the world, looked with concerned expressions at their screens.
In a statement released on Wednesday morning in Japan, the company reported that Ispace engineers observed that the estimated remaining propellant was “at the lower threshold and shortly afterward the descent speed rapidly increased.” In other words, the spacecraft ran out of fuel and fell. Communications with the spacecraft were then lost. “Based on this, it has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the Moon’s surface,” the company said.
An investigation will now have to determine why the spacecraft apparently misjudged its altitude. The analysis suggests that it was still high up when it should have been on the ground.
In an interview, Takeshi Hakamada, the chief executive of Ispace, said he was “very, very proud” of the result nonetheless. “I’m not disappointed,” he said
With the data obtained from the spacecraft, the company will be able to apply “lessons learned” to its next two missions, Mr. Hakamada said. (6)
The space launch was a big win for SpaceX: As the commentator during the space launch explained “Reusability is key to lowering the cost of space flight, which enables more investments in critical scientific research. The Falcon-9 first-stage rocket that supported the ispace mission will perform this entry burn for the fifth time, previously having supported previous launch missions, including two Starlink launch missions. This is our 155th recovery of an orbital class rocket including first-stage landings for Falcon-9 and Falcon Heavy.”
Daniel Pereira is research director at OODA. He is a foresight strategist, creative technologist, and an information communication technology (ICT) and digital media researcher with 20+ years of experience directing public/private partnerships and strategic innovation initiatives.
