The story
Founded by Takeshi Hakamada on Sep 10, 2010.1
Although ispace later became 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 US$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 30 January 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 15 July 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.
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.
As of 2019, ispace was developing a mission concept called Polar Ice Explorer that could prospect for lunar resources on a region near the lunar south pole.
On 21 July 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded a CLPS contract to Draper Laboratories and the team.
From Wikipedia’s article on Ispace Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5