iQPSQPS研究所

A QPS-SAR satellite weighs about 100 kilograms and unfolds a radar antenna 3.6 metres across from a package the size of a rolled towel. That antenna is the company's whole trick. Radar needs a big aperture, big apertures normally mean tonne-class satellites, and a lightweight mesh dish that stows small lets a spacecraft a tenth the size do the work. The best images resolve 46 centimetres, through cloud and in darkness, and the orbits are chosen deliberately for frequent passes over Japan rather than even global coverage.

The company is older than it looks. Two Kyushu University professors emeritus and a former Mitsubishi Heavy rocket engineer founded it in Fukuoka in 2005, explicitly to turn the university's satellite research into a local industry, and it spent its first decade quietly before the constellation era caught up with the idea. It has been listed in Tokyo since December 2023, and Japan's Ministry of Defense is now the anchor customer, with a five-year imagery contract that dwarfs the commercial business.

Attrition is the uncomfortable number. Fifteen satellites have launched and nine work. Two were destroyed when JAXA's Epsilon-6 rocket failed in 2022, the first satellite deployed its antenna but never returned radar data, and another went silent for eighteen months before recovering. The constellation target has moved with the losses, from 24 satellites by 2028 to 36 by 2031, with ten more dedicated Rocket Lab launches booked to get there.