Space Walker

Space Walker is a Japanese aerospace startup established on December 25, 2017 as a certified venture of the Tokyo University of Science, developing a reusable winged spaceplane it calls the Eco Rocket, intended to take off and land like a conventional airplane rather than descending under a capsule or parachute. The vehicle is designed around a lightweight composite cryogenic propellant tank and burns liquefied biomethane, a fuel choice the company says lowers environmental impact and reduces the ocean disposal of spent rocket stages that comes with expendable launch vehicles. Space Walker has partnered with JAXA and Japanese industrial firms including IHI Corporation, IHI Aerospace and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and has set a staged roadmap running from an experimental winged test flight, through a suborbital small satellite launch and a suborbital human spaceflight demonstration, toward an eventual goal of high speed point to point orbital transportation by the 2040s.