Since its formation as Team Hakuto in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, ispace company has been working on lunar technology for more than ten years.
Last month, the Japanese private lunar robotic exploration company ispace raised approximately $52 million (¥6.7 billion) in an initial public offering.
A large number of buy orders and the demand to hold shares prevented shares from being traded on the first day of trading, according to Reuters. The share price today, however, is ¥1,135, which is more than four times the ¥254 offering price.
The announcement comes just days after ispace declared that its Hakuto-R lander would land on the moon on April 25. This would be more than four months after its SpaceX Falcon 9 launch. It will be the first time a commercial company lands a spacecraft on the moon with the much-anticipated touchdown.
In the event that conditions change, the company has chosen three additional landing sites with backup landing dates of April 26, May 1, and May 3. If successful, the company will become one of only three countries to have spacecraft land on the moon, joining the US, China, and Russia.
Since its formation as Team Hakuto in the Google Lunar X Prize competition, ispace company has been working on lunar technology for more than ten years.
During a panel at TC Sessions: Space last year, CEO Takeshi Hakamada admitted to TechCrunch that the launch process had been difficult. It takes a lot of survival to last twelve years, he said. We have experienced many ups and downs.
Over the course of that time period, ispace was able to secure more than $235 million in private funding from backers such as Airbus Ventures, Japan’s Incubate Fund, and Katsunori Sago, a former chief strategy officer of SoftBank Group.
Additionally, the company has established partnerships with JAXA, Japan’s national space agency, and will send a rover to the agency on this first Hakuto-R mission.
The business has already begun to prepare for its second lunar mission for the following year. A $73 million NASA contract to transport scientific payloads to the lunar surface includes a third mission in 2025 that is being developed in conjunction with engineering behemoth Draper. Ispace is acting as a subcontractor and design agent for that third mission.