July 9, 2026
Japanese lunar exploration company ispace has booked 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of cargo capacity on a future SpaceX Starship mission to the moon, marking a major step in the company’s bid to become a leading provider of commercial lunar transportation services.
The Tokyo-based firm announced it will pay approximately $50 million for the payload slot on Starship, with a mission target no earlier than 2030. The deal positions ispace as a “Lunar Access Integrator,” offering customers two pathways to the lunar surface: dedicated smaller landers it calls “taxis” and shared space on Starship’s high-capacity “buses.”
“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,” said Takeshi Hakamada, ispace founder and CEO. “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.”
To ferry client payloads across the lunar surface after Starship lands, ispace will deploy its Mobile Cargo System (MCS), a pallet-like flat rover designed to transport cargo across rugged lunar terrain. The MCS payload capacity is scalable, allowing the system to grow as mission demand increases.
The deal comes as ispace continues recovering from the hard lessons of its first two lunar attempts. The company’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2022 and reached lunar orbit but crashed during landing. Mission 2, launched in 2025, suffered the same fate. Despite those setbacks, ispace is pressing ahead with three larger ULTRA lander missions scheduled for 2028, 2029, and 2030.
SpaceX’s Starship, meanwhile, has completed 12 suborbital test flights to date, including the debut of the more powerful Starship V3 in May 2026. Operational readiness for lunar missions, however, remains uncertain. SpaceX first unveiled Starship in 2016 with ambitious timelines that have slipped repeatedly. NASA has contracted a crewed variant of Starship, the Human Landing System (HLS), to return astronauts to the moon under the Artemis program, with the Artemis IV landing now slated for late 2028.
The emergence of rockets capable of transporting large-scale payloads to the moon is expected to accelerate deployment of lunar infrastructure, including power, communications, construction, data relay, and mobility systems. ispace’s Lunar Access Integration service aims to reduce barriers for subsequent infrastructure projects, enabling rapid growth in the transport of smaller lunar payloads for technology validation, exploration, and business development.
“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,” ispace said in its announcement.
SpaceX approached ispace directly about the partnership, according to Hakamada, reflecting the growing commercial interest in opening the lunar frontier to private industry. With multiple customers now booking space on Starship for moon-bound cargo, the vision of a sustainable lunar economy is beginning to take shape.