The old lunar team XPRIZE ispace Preps Moon Mission

Everyone has the moon in mind – but ispace, a Japanese robotics company, is strengthening its plans to go.

The company announced today that it will sign a contract with SpaceX for two flights, one in 2020, the other in 2021. The first mission will see the company insert an orbiter into the aircraft. Lunar orbit, sending a lander soon after, while the second mission will include a mobile deployed by a landing vehicle.

ispace previously funded the HAKUTO team, one of the finalists of the XPRIZE Lunar. In the end, none of the teams reached the goal of launching a lunar mission in March of this year, ending the cash portion of the prize. But ispace takes all the hard work of the HAKUTO team and places it in HAKUTO-R, in which the R stands for "reboot".

This contract with SpaceX could be the first lunar voyage of the company. "We share the vision with SpaceX to allow humans to live in space, so we are very pleased that they are joining us in this first leg of our journey," said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of Ispace, in a statement. .

For the most part, these two missions are technological demonstrations. After that, it is planned to explore the process of extracting water at the moon's poles, where the water deposits are abundant. The ultimate goal is to use several rovers contracted with other companies to extend a human presence on the moon. The announcement comes just a week after SpaceX announced plans to send Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa on the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR).

If the mission succeeds, ispace could be the first private entity to place a craft around another celestial body other than Earth, and then perform the first landing on the surface of another body. Only time will tell if it goes without a hitch.