Published on 12 Dec 2017Imagine the Moon supporting construction, energy, steel procurement, communications, transportation, agriculture, medicine, and tourism…We believe that by 2040 the Moon will support a population of 1,000, with 10,000 people visiting every year. ispace will be instrumental in supporting life on Earth through space-based infrastructure.For more information, please visit: http://ispace-inc.com/
ispace is a Japanese lunar exploration company that is a Goigle Lunar X Prize competitor and has just announced $90M in series A funding:https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/12/ispace-announces--series-a-funding.htmlSee also: https://ispace-inc.com & attached company press release
Developing ultra small rovers with 30kg payload lander around 2021. No mention of LV, Electron probably to small but LauncherOne and Firefly's 1000kg should be right size.
Quote from: TrevorMonty on 12/13/2017 07:22 amDeveloping ultra small rovers with 30kg payload lander around 2021. No mention of LV, Electron probably to small but LauncherOne and Firefly's 1000kg should be right size.Or maybe they'll go for a shared launch in an existing vehicle...
Work on the lander started early this year, Hakamada said. The lander should go through two key development milestones, a preliminary design review followed by a critical design review, next year. He said the company is in discussions to launch the spacecraft as secondary payloads on vehicles like SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
The first HAKUTO-R mission will place a spacecraft with a total mass, fully fueled, of 550 kilograms into orbit around the moon. The second mission will be a lander, weighing 1,400 kilograms, including a small rover. Both are intended to demonstrate ispace’s capabilities in delivering payloads to the moon for future commercial customers.
But before the lunar lander and rovers make it to the Moon, ispace will try to demonstrate that it can put a spacecraft into lunar orbit. That vehicle, if successfully inserted, will remain in orbit for one to two months, testing out navigational cameras that ispace plans to use for the lander and rover mission. It will also take images of the lunar surface and send those images down to Earth.
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1058752586210295808
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Ltd. (“MSI”), a subsidiary of MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings, Inc. based in Tokyo, Japan, and lunar exploration company, ispace, inc. (“ispace”), announced today that MSI has become a Corporate Partner of HAKUTO-R, the world’s first commercial lunar exploration program.As part of the partnership, the two organizations also announced plans to cooperate on the development of a lunar insurance service. The lunar surface is a region with many factors still unknown to humanity; as such, many new risks are to be expected. In order to overcome such risks and to progress toward future missions, MSI and ispace will work together to create a coverage for companies and individuals that will mitigate the risks of lunar exploration and support the sustainable development of a lunar economy.