page_title: Ispace (Japanese company)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ispace (Japanese company) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, an instrument on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 mission, took this image of Earth's moon. It is a three-colour composite of reflected near-infra-red radiation from the sun, and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces Earth. Small amounts of water were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations. This image illustrates their distribution at high latitudes toward the poles. Blue shows the signature of water, green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infra-red radiation from the sun and red shows a mineral called pyroxene.
context_page_description: ispace Inc. is a private Japanese company developing robotic spacecraft technologies to build landers and rovers to compete for both transportation and exploration mission contracts from space agencies and private industry. ispace will enable clients who may want to discover, map, and use the natural lunar resources.
  From 2013 to 2018, ispace was the owner and operator of the Hakuto team that competed in Google Lunar X Prize. The team developed a lunar rover named Sorato.
  ispace is currently headquartered in Tokyo, Japan with offices in the United States and Luxembourg. The company's founder and CEO is Takeshi Hakamada.
context_section_description: Although ispace is now independent, it began as a partner of a European organization called White Label Space. White Label Space (WLS) was an international team of space engineers that was founded in 2008 to compete in the Google Lunar X Prize, for a grand prize of $20 million to send a spacecraft to the Moon's surface, and have it travel 500 meters. WLS was headquartered in the Netherlands and led by Steve Allen. The European side aimed to develop the team's lunar lander while the Japanese group consisting of Tohoku University Space Robotics Lab and led by Kazuya Yoshida was to develop a rover.
  In 2010, White Label Space Japan LLC, the predecessor of ispace was founded by Takeshi Hakamada to manage the commercial and technical aspect of the Japanese group. On January 30, 2013, when the European teammates ceased substantial involvement in the prize, the Japan-based members decided to continue the work, and WLS transferred the GLXP participation right to White Label Space Japan LLC. Steve Allen, WLS's leader was succeeded by Takeshi Hakamada.
  In May 2013, the team's parent company, White Label Space Japan changed its name to ispace, while the GLXP team was renamed "Hakuto" on July 15 of the same year. Team Hakuto did not succeed in undertaking a lunar mission during the GLXP, but following the cessation of the competition, ispace continued its lunar exploration plans and, in 2018, the company succeeded in raising over US$90 million in private funding to develop its own lunar lander in addition to continuing its work on lunar rovers.
  By September 2018, ispace planned to test their systems by orbiting around the Moon but not land on it. The company signed up for two launches on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, to take place in 2020 and 2021. ispace is also developing a mission concept called Polar Ice Explorer that would prospect for lunar resources on a region near the lunar south pole.
  On 10 October 2018, an industry team formed by Draper Laboratory, along with ispace, General Atomics, and Spaceflight Industries submitted a proposal for a commercial lunar lander to NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program. According to Draper, ispace will serve as the team's design agent.
caption: Image of the Moon taken by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper. Blue shows the spectral signature of hydroxide (component of water), green shows the brightness of the surface as measured by reflected infrared radiation from the Sun and red shows a mineral called pyroxene.
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