Inside ispace Europe and the race to explore the moon

Time Markers

00:00 – Episode introduction
00:27 – Welcome
00:44 – ispace Europe focus
02:32 – Rover lessons learned
04:16 – Their approach
05:15 – What is MAGPIE?
07:46 – Latest MAGPIE milestone
08:25 – Managing partnerships
11:40 – The lunar economy
13:53 – Luxembourg as a space hub
15:49 – Looking ahead 1 year

Transcript – Julien Lamamy Conversation

This transcript has been edited-for-clarity.

Mike Gruss — Hello and welcome to the Space Minds podcast. I’m Mike Gruss with SpaceNews, and I’m joined today by Julien Lamamy, the Managing Director of ispace Europe. Julien, thanks so much for joining us. We’re recording here in Paris at World Space Business Week. I wanted to start by talking about ispace Europe. Tell me a little bit about what you all are working on. You are a subsidiary of ispace, but tell me what your particular focus is and what’s working at the company there right now.

Julien Lamamy — Thank you, Mike, happy to be in Paris, my hometown. So ispace Europe — we turned eight this year. ispace just turned fifteen. And the cool thing about ispace Europe is when it was opened. So in 2017 ispace was only about maybe twenty people. So very early on, ispace, the crew in Tokyo, already wanted to have a global presence in the US, in Europe and, of course, in Japan. And last year was the first big concrete milestone for ispace Europe in terms of establishing a track record. We built, tested, went through the whole VMV campaign for our first green rover, and then it flew on the mission to buy space. We did several checkouts in cruise to validate that rover actually did work. But, you know, as you know, only could go so far. So that’s our big achievement in the past twelve months, and it also is the example of our focus in terms of technology product development. It’s everything about surface mobility. So the rover is to deploy payloads or to acquire data, to explore, maybe to establish new communication networks on the surface and so on and so on. And then, of course, we’re in Europe, and in Luxembourg specifically, to see who in Europe could use our services of transportation and service exploration, and next, also take communications.

Mike Gruss — You brought up the rover. Let’s start there. I was going to bring that up later, but let’s go right to it. What were some of the lessons learned there, where there were a series of successes, maybe not the ultimate, not the ultimate, I guess, response that you want, but tell me about what was learned and what you walked with saying, like, “Hey, here’s what we know that works.”

Julien Lamamy — Yes. So what I say is the most important thing we know that works is, you know, we do a lot of cutting corners compared to what maybe NASA will do, or ESA will do, in terms of developing a rover, because that’s what ispace is about. But we’re here to show the best way to do things — speed, efficiency, cost, schedule. So we made our best judgment for which corners could be cut, and the fact that this rover worked in space over maybe a dozen checkouts — we also took pictures. So we really tested as much as we could for that rover still attached to the lander. That validates a very large share of those corner-cutting activities. So we know that those processes we established can be used now for our next rovers. That’s the biggest validation we get from the launch. Obviously, it’s also a track record. And I think having launched it, and having built that rover, tested it, launched it, operated it — we now have more credibility. These are the space agencies, but also private customers, and I think we’ll talk about MAGPIE in a few minutes. That’s also an example of building upon this first success.

Mike Gruss — Can you talk about, or give an example of some of that corner cutting and what, maybe how others could learn to land, or where, you know, how, what? How is it different if a European Space Agency or someone else was developing that? Is it time? Is it size? Is it weight?

Julien Lamamy — Definitely documentation. Yeah, there’s a lot of corners cut in terms of, you know, spending time with documenting as opposed to doing, and a lot of prototyping and cheap testing as opposed to analysis. I would say I used to be an engineer, so I’m now too remote to actually go into more into the details and tell exactly where those corners got cut, but I can tell you it’s a world of difference from the programs I used to work at NASA in terms of documentation and heaviness of the test compared to what we did.

Mike Gruss — Yeah, you brought up MAGPIE, but let’s, let’s talk about that. So first tell us, tell us what that is and yeah, how that fits into the portfolio there.

Julien Lamamy — MAGPIE is basically the result of looking at what Europe has today in terms of instruments that could be used for fully exploration. Right away, when I joined ispace to kickstart the R&D department of ispace Europe, I surveyed what instruments are out there. A lot of them had flight heritage, for example, these kind of things. And the goal has been to, can we answer the key question about the Moon, which is this hydrogen that we’re seeing from remote sensing — is it H₂O, is it OH, is it something else? And can we do this as effectively, as cheaply as possible? MAGPIE is a result of that surveying of instruments and trying to answer one key question. We’re not trying to do the Mars Exploration Rovers or Curiosity or Perseverance. We’re trying to be as small as possible. And so it’s about a 30-kilogram rover with a radar to understand the subsurface geological context, a neutron spectrometer to know where your hydrogen is — so it’s like a metal detector, but for hydrogen — and then a very shallow drill and mass spectrometer that will answer the question about what form hydrogen is in. Possibly the first European mission to explore the lunar surface. ESA and other countries in Europe have had payloads launching on landers, but never really exploring the surface. So this could be the first one, and for us, it’s demonstrating we can go to the next level of service.

Mike Gruss — Next step here. What are the latest milestones for MAGPIE?

Julien Lamamy — We passed two reviews. We completed the pre-phase A, we’re halfway also through the next phase. And the next big gate is the ministerial council, which will happen in November. So early next year, European Space Agency gets their budget approved, and MAGPIE is one of those budget lines. So we’re hoping that the momentum carries us through, and then we’re launching in the late 2020s.

Mike Gruss — There’s a lot of partners on that program. Partnerships in Europe are very important, but talk to me about working across that diverse group of agencies, science agencies and countries, and how that could work. And is there something to be learned there from how space in Europe works in the future?

Julien Lamamy — Europe can be confusing to have national space agencies and then the European Space Agency. I came to ispace shortly after sixteen years in the US, so I also had to learn how things work. But ESA right now, and the new director of exploration, really has a strong vision for how ESA can explore the Moon and other planets, and in doing so, also develop new capabilities and new ways of approaching exploration. MAGPIE would be the first mission under a small mission program similar to NASA’s SMEX program, and that’s very new for ESA. And as I mentioned, for MAGPIE, we defined the objectives. It’s really a mission service delivery to ESA. ESA didn’t say what they wanted; we offered the mission end-to-end, turnkey, and they were interested. That’s very new for ESA. We’re also hoping MAGPIE could launch on an ispace Japanese lander with collaboration from JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency. So not only are we pushing boundaries in terms of using new space methods for mission-as-a-service, but we’re doing it in a more traditional framework of international collaborations.

Mike Gruss — Can we talk a little bit about the lunar economy? That’s something that’s gotten a lot more attention in the last couple of years. How do you see that evolving, and if we were to talk in five years, how might that look and how might this economy affect the work you’re doing?

Julien Lamamy — We were talking about having the perspective of history a few minutes ago. When I joined ispace eight years ago to today, it’s a world of difference in terms of engagement — not only of agencies. Eight years ago, the OPTIMIS program didn’t exist. Now we have an OPTIMIS program. There’s a very strong momentum worldwide. It also extends to private companies, not only startups and ventures but also established companies. On the Tenacious mission, we launched a shovel we were going to use to collect regolith for NASA that was developed by a mining equipment company — they’d been around for 100 years and had no space involvement before we talked to them. So yes, it’s still developing, but the trend and momentum are strong. Business models from launch and telecom translate really well to the Moon — things like transport vehicles, power, and new resource-based industries. There’s even growing interest in helium-3.

Mike Gruss — You’re based in Luxembourg. Talk to us a little bit about Luxembourg as a space hub.

Julien Lamamy — Luxembourg has a good track record in space. They established SES as a top operator. And based on that success, in 2016 the Deputy Prime Minister decided to launch a big Space Resources initiative. Back then, space resources were fringe and esoteric, even within the space industry. That was a bold move by Luxembourg — the first country in Europe to attract space resources companies and new space players. Now there are over seventy companies in Luxembourg. It’s a strong ecosystem with a good mix of space sectors. My hope for Luxembourg over the next five years is that companies start interconnecting more and building an even stronger network.

Mike Gruss — If we were to chat in a year, where do you expect ispace Europe might be? What accomplishments are you hoping for?

Julien Lamamy — The ESA ministerial council will dictate a lot — its decisions could shape Europe’s lunar strategy. My hope is to remain bold, influence exploration strategy for Europe, and show that smaller companies can play a major role in lunar access and resource development.