WASHINGTON — Japanese lunar lander developer has raised $53.5 million in a stock sale to help fund development of upcoming missions.
The Tokyo-based company, which went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange nearly a year ago, announced March 28 that it completed a sale of 10.25 million shares of stock, raising approximately 8.1 billion yen ($53.5 million). The shares were sold to institutional investors outside of Japan.
Most of the funding — about 7.1 billion yen — will go towards various elements of what the company calls Mission 3, a lander being developed by its American subsidiary, ispace U.S., for Draper. That APEX 1.0 lander will fly a mission in 2026 for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, going to the far side of the moon.
The company said 1.8 billion yen will be used to cover part of the cost of two relay satellites being built by Blue Canyon Technologies to handle communications between the farside lander and the Earth. It is spending 2.1 billion yen for part of the cost of the mission’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, while 3.2 billion yen will go towards production of the lander itself. The company will use the remaining 1 billion yen for other working capital.
Mission 3 is one of three missions under simultaneous development by ispace. The company is completing work on Mission 2, a lander called Resilience similar to its HAKUTO-R M1 lander that crashed attempting to land on the moon last April, and is beginning work on Mission 6, a larger “Series 3” lander projected to launch in late 2026. Both Mission 2 and Mission 6 are being developed by ispace in Japan.
Jumpei Nozaki, chief financial officer of ispace, said in a media briefing that the company had 9.7 billion yen of cash on hand as of the end of December. “The current funds of 9.7 billion yen is not sufficient to cover all three missions and additional development funds will be required,” he said. “We have decided to raise funds…
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