Exclusive: Ispace Director Discusses Historic Moon Landing Attempt

TaiwanPlus News

Japanese firm ispace is set to attempt its second moon landing, potentially becoming the first private company in Asia to achieve the feat. In an exclusive interview with ispace's Jumpei Nozaki, the executive business director and CFO discusses what has changed since the firm's first moon landing attempt in 2023, as well as what it was like collaborating with Taiwan's National Central University. Students there have developed Taiwan's first-ever lunar device, a radiation probe that's on board ispace's lunar lander.

Transcript

00:00Mr. Nozaki-san, we are hours away until the moon landing attempt.

00:04How are you feeling?

00:05Kind of a mixed feeling, to be honest.

00:07I mean, of course, excited, you know, but we have been waiting for this moment for like

00:12five or seven, more than seven years, I think, you know, since we started.

00:17We started this Randa development in 2016 to 17, and at that time, something really

00:23amazing idea is, even at that time, we are thinking about, let's do two missions anyway

00:28first, because it's not, we are thinking about the future, you know, commercialized mission,

00:33right?

00:34So, to do that, it's not only kind of a one-time challenge, we are very proud about our kind

00:40of progress coming so far, but at the same time, also very nervous, to be honest, right?

00:46We have many stakeholders, you know, around us, so it's a really important mission for

00:51many of us.

00:52You mentioned that mission two was always part of the plan, but can you take us through

00:58differences in approach?

00:59When the first mission finished, very lucky thing for us was we know what was the root

01:08cause of that mission one landing failure.

01:13Apart from landing phase, other than that, hardware things, those were performing perfectly.

01:20Mission two, you know, we want to have a completion of this lunar landing, of course, but it's a

01:25gradual progress of the process, right?

01:28And so, mission two, one of the important key messages is, you know, landing and beyond,

01:34so what we do after landing.

01:36So we had our own micro-rover developed by iSpace Europe.

01:42Once after landing on the moon's surface, we deployed this rover, and we, iSpace, will also

01:48operate this micro-rover and do many kind of experiments on the lunar surface.

01:52Many countries, companies, countries, they are thinking about creating some moon base on

01:59the lunar surface, but that is a, you know, to create those type of moon base, before that,

02:04we need to do many experiments beforehand.

02:07And what was it like collaborating with the Taiwan student team?

02:11We feel this kind of, maybe it's a good word, is we feel very good hope here, because first

02:18of all, this is a university, the people we are discussing with, you know, Central University

02:24of Taiwan, it includes also young students, relatively young from ourselves, but, so this, those are,

02:32including us, but we are exactly the generation going to lead this space industry in the next

02:3820 to 30 years, right?

02:40We really want to cherish this kind of, you know, starting, important starting from the

02:47university.

02:48And, I just, you know, explain, iSpace was also started from a university company.

02:52Thank you very much so much, and I'm thrilled to help you guys find me with the

03:09terraria total of 15 years, because, so i think that now it's the cierta line, right?

03:13So, that's huge.

03:14If you get whatever you've been to, I would say it was a big healthier but it's that I

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