Childhood Encounter Leads to Multimillion-Dollar Space Waste Removal Venture

More Japanese investors are looking to the stars for investment ideas, literally. Japanese-owned Astroscale is the world’s first privately-owned space debris removal enterprise.

A conceptual image of Target, which is part of an apparatus developed by Astroscale for space debris removal. Courtesy of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.

TOKYO—IT industry veteran Nobu Okada’s first venture into the space industry came at the age of 40, when he was going through a midlife crisis at the same time the tech bubble was bursting.

The CEO of Astroscale, the world’s first privately-owned space debris-removal enterprise, recalled at the time his visit to NASA as a 15-year-old, when he received an autograph from Japan’s first astronaut, Mamoru Mohri.