WASHINGTON — A deal between the United States and Japan about contributions for the Artemis lunar exploration mission could create more chances for a Japanese lunar lander developer.
Tokyo-based ispace mentioned the April 10 agreement between NASA and the Japanese government about roles in Artemis as a possible new market for the company. Under the agreement, the Japanese space agency JAXA will provide a pressurized rover for Artemis missions starting in the early 2030s, with NASA including two seats on Artemis landing missions for JAXA astronauts.
“We believe that the Japan-U.S. agreement on the Artemis program, made in April of this year, created a quite positive business environment for us to work with and contribute to the governments of the various countries,” Takeshi Hakamada, chief executive of ispace, said in a May 10 earnings call about the company’s financial results for the fiscal year ending in March 2024.
He argued that the agreement would create demand for the kinds of small robotic lunar landers that ispace is developing. “A number of scientific exploration and technology demonstration missions using small landers will most likely be required,” he said. “Once manned missions begin, supplementary missions using small landers will also be necessary.”
He acknowledged later in the call that it was too early to estimate how big this demand for additional landers might be from Japan. He noted that the Japanese government plans to invest one trillion yen ($6.4 billion) over 10 years in the country’s commercial space sector. “We assume a large, significant portion of the funding will be allocated to lunar-related activities in the future,” he said.
The company is currently working on three landers in Japan and the United States. Its Mission 2, or M2, lander, a copy of the HAKUTO-R M1 lander that crashed attempting a landing in April 2023, is nearing completion. It is scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 late this year.
The company’s U.S. subsidiary, ispace U.S., is developing its first APEX 1.0 lander under a contract with Draper for a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission in 2026 that ispace calls M3. In Japan, ispace is starting design of a lander called Series 3 supported by a Japanese government grant that will launch on a mission designated M6 in 2027.
That parallel development requires a lot of money. The company raised 8.1 billion yen in a secondary stock sale March 28, with most of the funding going towards aspects of the M3 lander, including its launch and work on two relay satellites needed for communications with the lander, which will go to the far side of the moon. The company also borrowed 7 billion yen from Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation April 30.
“We expect to record a net loss due to a large R&D cost for the development of the landers, therefore, we concluded that it was crucial for us to maintain an equity buffer to improve our financial health,” said Jumpei Nozaki, chief financial officer of ispace, explaining why the company raised money through the stock sale and loan.
The business reported total sales of 2.36 billion yen for the financial year ending March 2024, with a net deficit of 2.37 billion yen. The loss, he mentioned, was decreased from the payment of an insurance plan the business had bought for the M1 lander. For the current financial year ending in March 2025, ispace is estimating a much larger deficit, of almost 12.5 billion yen, with total sales of 4.03 billion yen.
The significant growth in the net deficit, Nozaki mentioned, is connected to the expected completion and launch of M2 and ongoing work on M3. “This will be a substantial net deficit,” he said. “But, let me emphasize that this amount of net deficit is in line with our original plan and projections.”
The business also announced in the earnings call it had enlisted a new client for M3, a Romanian business called CDS that will showcase precision location measurement technology on the lander. CDS is the third client for M3 after NASA and Rhea Space Activity, which will test navigation technologies on the relay satellites accompanying the lander.
