Interstellar Technologies

Interstellar Technologies (IST), founded in 2003 and headquartered in Taiki, Hokkaido, Japan, is Japan's first private space company to achieve orbital rocket development, known for the MOMO series of small suborbital sounding rockets and the ZERO orbital launch vehicle under development. The company was co-founded by internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie (former Livedoor CEO, widely known in Japan as "Horiemon") alongside aerospace engineers, with operations based in rural Hokkaido rather than traditional urban aerospace clusters.

IST's MOMO is a single-stage liquid-propellant (liquid oxygen and ethanol) suborbital rocket approximately 10 meters tall and 500 kg at liftoff, designed to reach 100+ km altitude (the Kármán line) for microgravity research, atmospheric science, and technology demonstration payloads. After early failures in 2017 and 2018, MOMO-3 became the first privately developed Japanese rocket to reach space in May 2019, reaching 113.4 km altitude. Subsequent MOMO flights continued achieving suborbital trajectory success, establishing IST as Japan's leading private suborbital launch provider with a cadence surpassing the JAXA sounding rocket program in commercial responsiveness.

ZERO is IST's planned two-stage orbital rocket targeting ~200 kg payload to LEO, designed with liquid oxygen/liquid methane propulsion and reusable first-stage architecture. ZERO would make IST Japan's first privately developed orbital launch vehicle, competing with JAXA's Epsilon and H-IIA/H3 for small satellite rideshare and establishing Hokkaido's Taiki launch corridor as Japan's commercial spaceport.

IST differentiates through extremely low costs achieved through Hokkaido's cheap land, open-sky access, and lean team culture inspired by Silicon Valley startup methods applied to aerospace — an approach Horie calls "garage rocket" development that challenges Japan's traditional large-contractor aerospace development model.