Midtown Inc. (Headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; CEO: Takahiro Nakamura) announces that Takahiro Nakamura, CEO, served as a moderator for a session at "SPACETIDE 2026," one of the largest international space business conferences in the Asia-Pacific region, held from Monday, July 6 to Thursday, July 9, 2026, at Toranomon Hills Forum in Tokyo.
The session was held on Thursday, July 9, from 14:30 to 15:00 in a fireside format (Track B), under the theme "What Do the Bold Challenges of Space Newcomers Tell Us About the Essence of the Space Business?"
The featured speaker was Atsushi Tamura, a television personality who conceived the satellite development project "Atsushi Space Challenge." The project's satellite was developed with funding raised through crowdfunding and was deployed in September 2025 from the Japanese Experiment Module "Kibo" on the International Space Station (ISS). As someone who took on the challenge from outside the space industry and successfully sent a satellite into orbit, he spoke about the realities he encountered along the way. Hayato Okuma of Tasuku Inc., who provided technical support for the project, also joined the session.
Taking these challenges from outside the space industry as a starting point, the session discussed how to broaden the base of the space industry.
Nakamura, who moderated the session, serves as CEO of Midtown Inc. and Specially Appointed Professor at Science Tokyo. As Board Member and COO of the space startup ispace, he led business development and fundraising, and was involved in launching and driving the commercial lunar exploration programs HAKUTO and HAKUTO-R. He moderated this session drawing on his expertise in the commercialization of the space business and in industry-academia-government collaboration.
With the mission of "solving global issues and creating the space industry," our company provides management consulting in the fields of space development and climate change. By bridging the space industry with other sectors and with society at large, we will continue to work toward the creation of new businesses.
For consultations regarding new entry into the space business or collaborations, please feel free to contact us through our website. CONTACT US https://midtown-inc.com/contact/en