How a Japanese company wants to make history on the moon

The reason for the global struggle for supremacy are the lunar poles. There is ice from which drinking water for humans and hydrogen as fuel for machines can be extracted. “As soon as we have a gas station in space, space activities will increase dramatically,” explains Hakamada. He hopes to control part of the deal with Ispace by offering cheap delivery services to Earth’s moon.

The vision is already paying off on the financial market. On April 13, Ispace went public in Japan and on the first day the issue price increased six-fold to 1,201 yen, the equivalent of around eight euros. Last week, the price then shot to its first peak at 2,373 yen before falling to around 2,000 yen (13.50 euros) this Monday.

Risky bet for investors

However, the bet of the investors is risky: On the one hand, the company has not promised any profits in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the competition in the space business is growing rapidly. The USA, China and the European Union have already launched their own moon missions. New countries such as South Korea and India are now joining them. In early January, the US and Japan signed a new framework agreement to underscore cooperation in space.

It is intended to “raise the long-standing cooperation to a new level,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Not only is an accelerated joint development of technologies planned, but also of transport systems and the development of the moon. Political will and a lot of money are also behind this in Japan. “The Japanese space program is extremely ambitious,” says Japanese expert Kazuto Suzuki from the University of Tokyo.

Japan has long been a space power with a broad industrial base. But the increasing military and civilian use of space has prompted the government to double government funding to 600 billion yen ($4 billion) within two years.

On the one hand, established forces such as the Jaxa space agency and Japan’s large corporations, which have been making important contributions to the development of space for decades, benefit from this. But also start-ups and smaller companies like Ispace. From the beginning, its founder tried to build a truly international company, with employees and partners in key markets. This multinationality is a major competitive advantage for Hakamada. According to the founder, his company was able to talk to the giants of space travel on an equal footing. “If we had only started with Japanese, this would not have been possible.”

The Ispace founder fears getting space sick

There is a communications center for the space flights in Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the European rocket company Ariane is taking over the construction of the moon lander. The probe was assembled in Ottobrunn by the plant manufacturer IABG. The American Draper Laboratory, a non-profit developer of space technology with at least 1700 employees, meanwhile provides the control and access to the well-filled funding pots of the US government.

The business model that Hakamada originally devised for Google’s Lunar X-Prize is also special: together with experts from Germany, his team took part in the 20 million dollar competition under the name Hakuto. Hakuto is borrowed from Japanese mythology, the “white rabbit”. It is the Asian equivalent of the “Man in the Moon”.

Hakamada did not manage to send a rover over the moon in the time specified by Google. But his idea of ​​developing a lunar logistics provider has survived. Rockets and large-scale projects are not his thing because they cost a lot of money and time. He prefers the niche. “Big projects may be spectacular,” he explains, “but they also require a lot of small transports.”

In 2015 he decided to develop his own landing probe. He quickly found customers: the United Arab Emirates are sending their moon rover Rashid on the journey, and Japan’s space agency Jaxa is sending another lander. Also on board is a solid-state battery from the Japanese company NGK Spark Plug, which is to be tested under space conditions.

The stars seem to be in a favorable position for the project: According to the Chinese horoscope, the world is in the year of the rabbit. So far the trip has gone smoothly. However, Hakamada himself does not dream of going to the moon or Mars. He is afraid of getting space sick. Instead, he’s pursuing a different goal: “I want to experience a world where cool spaceships travel between planets.”

Japan’s insurers also discovered space travel

Japan’s established players include the technology groups NEC and Mitsubishi Electric, which build a wide range of satellites. In terms of rockets, the Japanese want to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the medium term, which currently dominates commercial rocket launches. “Hakuto-R”, as the Ispace mission to the moon is called, was also launched in December 2022 on board a Falcon 9 rocket from the US space company.

IHI Aerospace is developing the Epsilon rocket for this purpose, which thanks to artificial intelligence should be able to check itself quickly before launch. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of the largest heavy industrial groups in the country, is responsible for the large launch vehicles such as Japan’s H2A.

However, the program has just suffered a major setback: the new H3 rocket, which is designed to launch satellites into orbit around the moon and even the sun, had to be blown up shortly after launch on its maiden flight in March. Instead, a colorful bunch of private companies are now thriving.

With his start-up Interstellar Technologies, the Japanese Internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie is trying to develop a rocket for small satellites – so far with little success. Canon is trying to get its own project off the ground.

>> Read here: Isar Aerospace – a model of success beyond the state economy

Former car engineer Shinichiro Nakajima, who in his more earthly career was involved in the development of Audi’s four-wheel drive, wants to enrich space travel with mini-rovers. His company Dymon produces the two-wheeled “Yaoki”, which weighs only 498 grams. The name comes from the Japanese proverb “nanakorobi, yaoki”. Literally translated it means “fall down seven times, get up eight times”. Because the rover, with its two large wheels on a small body, is designed in such a way that it can continue to drive even after a rollover.

This product is also well advanced. Dymon is scheduled to take part in three lunar trips, including missions by American space start-ups Astrobotics and Intuitive Machines and the US space agency Nasa’s Artemis program.

Even Japan’s insurers have discovered space travel as a growth market. Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance wants to insure lunar rover. Rival Mitsui Sumitomo works with Ispace to develop insurance for lunar probes.

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