ispace shares rose nearly 19% on Thursday, the largest single-day gain in six months, after the company said it will partner with SpaceX to use Starship for lunar cargo transport. ispace will develop a mobile cargo system to move customer payloads under 500 kg several kilometres across the lunar surface and has purchased 500 kg of payload capacity on Starship. The system is not expected to launch before 2030. The company said market demand for transport services is large and committed to ensurin

ispace shares rose nearly 19% on Thursday, the largest single-day gain in six months, after the company said it will partner with SpaceX to use Starship for lunar cargo transport. ispace will develop a mobile cargo system to move customer payloads under 500 kg several kilometres across the lunar surface and has purchased 500 kg of payload capacity on Starship. The system is not expected to launch before 2030. The company said market demand for transport services is large and committed to ensuring the next landing succeeds; ispace’s two prior lunar landing attempts failed (2023: software issue; 2025: hardware failure). ispace plans to launch an orbital satellite in 2027 and a follow-up lunar landing mission in 2028.