ispace technologies

ispace Inc. is a private Japanese company currently developing robotic spacecraft, including landers and rovers, to compete for transportation and mission contracts in the aerospace industry. The company's goal is to create vehicles that will allow clients to discover, map, and access natural lunar resources in the future.

The company began as the Japanese arm of European-based White Label Space, an international team of space engineers to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP).

White Label Space Japan changed its name to ispace in May 2013, with the GLXP team being renamed to Hakuto, after the team's Unit 2 Rover Prototype. After failing to undertake a lunar mission for the competition, ispace continued its lunar exploration plans, successfully raising over $90 million of private funding to develop its own lunar lander.

ispace signed a working agreement with Draper in October 2018 to serve as the team's design agent. Rapid increases in customer demand for payload services in the lunar exploration industry (namely NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract, or CLPS) prompted ispace to restructure its lunar program, renamed "Hakuto-R," in August 2019. ispace opened its Mission Control Center for its Hakuto-R program in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, on December 9, 2020. The facility will access the European Space Agency's (ESA) ground station network for mission operations. It will manage space mission operations from the point of launch until the end of missions.

Hakuto-R Mission 1 will include a lunar lander (Artemis-7) and is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket in October 2021. Mission 2 will include a lunar lander and rover and is scheduled for launch in March 2023.