ispace shares rose nearly 19% on Thursday, the largest single-day gain in six
months, after the company said it will partner with SpaceX to use Starship for
lunar cargo transport. ispace will develop a mobile cargo system to move
customer payloads under 500 kg several kilometres across the lunar surface and
has purchased 500 kg of payload capacity on Starship. The system is not expected
to launch before 2030. The company said market demand for transport services is
large and committed to ensuring the next landing succeeds; ispace’s two prior
lunar landing attempts failed (2023: software issue; 2025: hardware failure).
ispace plans to launch an orbital satellite in 2027 and a follow-up lunar
landing mission in 2028.
