(Image credit: ispace)
ispace is expanding its already extensive moon plans to include SpaceX’s Starship megarocket.
The Tokyo-based company announced today (July 8) that it has booked 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo capacity on Starship, the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, for a moon mission that could launch as soon as 2030. The deal is worth $50 million, according to Tokyo Brief.
“We are very pleased to be able to offer the new Lunar Access Integration service utilizing Starship’s payload space through our collaboration with SpaceX,” ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in a statement today. “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.”
As that quote suggests, ispace may become a regular Starship customer over the years, using the giant vehicle to carry its new “Mobile Cargo System” to the lunar surface. The MCS is a pallet-like flat rover capable of transporting up to 1,100 pounds (500 kg) across the lunar terrain.
The newly announced Mobile Cargo System moon mission aboard Starship will launch no earlier than 2030, according to ispace. The timeline will depend largely on SpaceX’s ability to progress Starship into an operational vehicle. (Starship has flown 12 test flights to date, all of them suborbital.)
ispace has flown with SpaceX before; Falcon 9 rockets launched the Japanese company’s robotic HAKUTO-R moon rover in both 2022 and 2025. Both times, HAKUTO-R reached lunar orbit successfully but crashed during its landing attempt.
Starship is SpaceX’s super-heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is designed for full reusability and capable of launching up to 150 tons (136 metric tons) to low Earth orbit. The rocket has been in development for a while; SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk first announced the vehicle during the International Astronomical Congress in Mexico in 2016. Expectations for its operational readiness have been an ever-moving goal post.
In 2021, for example, SpaceX was targeting sometime “before 2024” for the spacecraft’s first mission to the moon, but development delays have continually pushed that date back. 2024 was also the year NASA originally targeted for the first crewed lunar landing mission of the agency’s Artemis program, though that’s no longer the plan.
NASA contracted Starship as the lunar lander for that touchdown, which is now slated to take place during Artemis IV in late 2028. Agency officials have cited Starship as part of the reason that Artemis’ schedules have slipped.
NASA and ispace aren’t the only customers that have signed up for a Starship ride to the moon. For example, Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced the #dearMoon project in 2018, booking Starship to fly himself and a handful of artists on what would have been the spacecraft’s first crewed mission around the moon. As Starship delays continued to mount, though, Maezawa canceled the flight in 2024.
But momentum is building for Starship moon missions. After all, NASA now has two successful Artemis missions in the books — the uncrewed Artemis I to lunar orbit in late 2022 and the four-person Artemis II flight around the moon this past April. The agency is gearing up for Artemis III, which will test rendezvous and docking operations with NASA’s Orion capsule and two crewed lunar landers — Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon — in Earth orbit in mid-2027, if all goes to plan.
So ispace is positioning itself to be a key player in a possible lunar goldrush.
“The emergence of rockets with the capability of transporting large-scale payloads to the moon is expected to accelerate deployment of lunar infrastructure, including power, communications, construction, data and mobility,” ispace said in today’s statement.
“The establishment of this core infrastructure on the lunar surface will reduce barriers hindering subsequent infrastructure projects, leading to a rapid expansion in the transport of relatively small lunar payloads for purposes such as technology validation, exploration and business development,” the company wrote, adding that, as mission demand grows, so too will the payload capacity of its Mobile Cargo System units.
In addition to the new Mobile Cargo System design, ispace is also planning three lunar landing missions with its ULTRA Lander vehicle, which are scheduled for 2028, 2029 and 2030.
