Recently publicized by Suzuki, soon they are going to space after funding the company called Ispace for its lunar exploration. The end goal for this lunar exploration is to build a city on the moon. Ispace is expected to land in 2020 and have rovers to explore and map out the surface. Before that, a lander will be injected into the lunar orbit to observe the lunar surface by 2019.
So far, Ispace has raised over $90 million in funds to send robots to the moon as a part of the first phase observation of a 20-year moon colonization plan. Plenty of companies actually teamed up to fund this project, like Konica Minolta, Development Bank of Japan, Japan Airlines, Tokyo Broadcasting System, and last but definitely not least, the multinational motor Corporation, Suzuki.
The company has just issued a statement that they are funding two lunar missions by Ispace. Suzuki also stated in a press release that “Ispace currently manages team HAKUTO, the sole Japanese team practicing in the Google Lunar XPRIZE. With this new funding, Ispace will continue to develop its revolutionary technology and spearhead two exploration missions to the Moon after the HAKUTO mission.” Ispace itself actually have started to work on lunar landers for more frequent transport back and forth to the moon.
Sounds pretty solid! Ispace actually made a movie as well for everyone to see.