TOKYO — Japanese lunar exploration company ispace is buying space on a future Starship lunar lander mission to deliver larger payloads to the moon.
The company announced at a briefing here July 8, held in conjunction with the Spacetide conference, that it is developing a Mobile Cargo System that will fly on a Starship lander as soon as 2030 to deliver up to several hundred kilograms of customer payloads.
The Mobile Cargo System is a rover that ispace will develop to carry payloads from the Starship lander up to a few kilometers away. The company will be responsible for integrating the payloads on the ground before launch and their operations after landing.
For the first mission, ispace has purchased 500 kilograms of payload space on a SpaceX Starship lunar lander scheduled to fly no earlier than 2030. The companies did not disclose financial details of the agreement.
“High-capacity, relatively low-cost lunar transport, such as that provided by Starship, is essential to realizing the sustainable lunar economy that ispace aims to create,” said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and chief executive of ispace.
The Starship contract is part of what ispace called an evolution of the company into a “lunar access integrator” that goes beyond its traditional work in lunar lander development.
“As a lunar access integrator, ispace aims to combine high-value-added lunar transport using its own landers with high-capacity transport opportunities utilizing Starship, serving as a gateway for customers around the world to access the moon and carry out their missions,” Hakamada said.
In an interview, he said the company decided to pursue the Mobile Cargo System on Starship in part because of interest from potential customers in delivering larger payloads as well as ispace’s own vision for lunar development. The company has not disclosed any payload customers yet for the new system.
The 500 kilograms that ispace reserved on the Starship lander include both the mass of the Mobile Cargo System itself and the payload. Hakamada said only that “several hundred kilograms” of payload mass would be available.
The company plans to develop the Mobile Cargo System internally, leveraging rover technologies from ispace’s European subsidiary. He said that “no technological breakthroughs” are needed to build the rover and associated systems.
In the announcement and interview, ispace emphasized that the Mobile Cargo System flying on Starship will be in addition to, and not in place of, its own lunar landers. Its first two lander missions, in April 2023 and June 2025, crashed while attempting to land.
In March, ispace unveiled a new lander design called Ultra, unifying separate designs from its Japanese and U.S. business units. Three Ultra lander missions are in development for flights between 2028 and 2030, with the first two built in Japan and the third in the United States for a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission led by Draper.
Hakamada said the new Mobile Cargo System may be able to serve growing demand for lunar cargo delivery for the NASA-led lunar base initiative announced in March. The company said in its announcement that it is considering ways to expand the system to carry payloads weighing more than one ton.
Because ispace is one of several customers on the Starship lander mission, he said SpaceX will select the landing site, but he expects it will likely be in the lunar south polar region, the planned site of the NASA moon base.
The agreement between ispace and SpaceX extends a business arrangement between the companies, with SpaceX launching the first two ispace lander missions on Falcon 9 rockets.
“Having previously flown multiple ispace missions to the moon aboard Falcon 9, we’re excited to expand this relationship to Starship,” Stephanie Bednarek, vice president of commercial sales at SpaceX, said in the statement. “Their integration services provide a valuable pathway for smaller payloads to secure a ride to the moon today, and we look forward to supporting ispace and their customers as they help expand access to the lunar surface.”
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