With all the commotion around SpaceX occurring, the Japanese robotics industry decided it was their turn to hop into the mission. SpaceX, headed by Elon Musk, plans to send passengers to outer space in the near future. Their Falcon 9 rocket ship has its course set for the moon in 2020. So where does this new, Japanese company come in?
iSpace is its name, and landing rovers and robots on the moon is their game. By 2020, SpaceX wants to have their ship in the moon’s orbit so that, in 2021, they can deploy a second mission with robots and rovers to begin to take empirical measurements of ice and water on the moons surface/poles. The goal of SpaceX and iSpace teaming up is to one day extract enough water to prove that a human settlement can exist on the moon, and then eventually make that possibility a reality.
While 2020 and 2021 don’t seem like far off dates, the reality of having humans settle on the moon is a pipe dream at best. Its noble, however, to see Musk and other companies, such as the iSpace funded HAKUTO project, to take such interest in literally expanding our horizons beyond the earth’s atmosphere.
