Interstellar Technologiesインターステラテクノロジズ

Interstellar Technologies builds rockets in Taiki, a dairy-farming town in Hokkaido, and fuels them accordingly: ZERO, its orbital launcher, burns liquid biomethane refined from local cattle manure. The rocket stands 32 metres tall, lifts about a tonne to orbit, and clusters nine of the company's own Cosmos engines on the first stage. Before it came MOMO, a small sounding rocket, seven of which flew between 2017 and 2021.

The company grew out of a hobbyist rocket club formed around Takafumi Horie, the Livedoor founder, in 2003, and incorporated in 2013. Its argument is that rockets get cheap the way cars did, through production engineering, and it has the partner to match: Toyota's Woven arm leads its latest funding round and lends its manufacturing methods. The launch site is next door at Hokkaido Spaceport, so the factory, the pad and the fuel supply all sit in one town.

MOMO-3 became the first privately developed Japanese rocket to pass 100 kilometres in May 2019, and three of the seven MOMOs reached space. Since July 2021, though, nothing has flown. ZERO's debut has moved from 2020 to 2023 to 2027, funded along the way by government innovation grants with stage gates, and its advertised payload has grown with each revision. Thirteen years after incorporation, the company has yet to attempt orbit.