ispace hitches a ride on SpaceX's Starship to bring low-cost cargo services to the moon

The new Lunar Access Integrator service will provide shared transportation for Moon-bound payloads, effectively acting as a "bus" to the lunar surface. It will complement ispace's ongoing development of dedicated lunar landers, or "taxis," according to Executive Vice President Hideaki Kamiya.

As part of its broader lunar ambitions, ispace plans to land three lunar landers by 2030, including one mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme. The company previously relied on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets for its lunar missions, though its landing attempts in 2023 and 2025 were unsuccessful.

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ispace said its partnership with SpaceX will significantly accelerate its expansion in the lunar infrastructure market. Under the collaboration, the Japanese company will use SpaceX's reusable Starship to launch a new low-cost lunar cargo service while offering payload integration services that will allow customers worldwide to share rides to the Moon on future Starship missions.

ispace's Previous Lunar Missions

Mission 1 (December 2022)

Launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December 2022, ispace's first lunar mission carried multiple payloads, including the United Arab Emirates' Rashid micro rover. The lander successfully entered lunar orbit, but an altitude calculation error during the final descent caused it to exhaust its fuel, resulting in a hard landing and mission failure.

Mission 2 (June 2025)

Launched in January 2025, the mission featured ispace's Resilience lunar lander and the Tenacious micro rover, which was designed to deploy on the Moon and collect lunar regolith. Although the spacecraft successfully completed several mission milestones, it failed to achieve a soft landing during its final descent in June 2025.