ispace, a company with a spacecraft en route to the moon, is now trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n

The Japanese firm raised around $52 million (\u00a56.7 billion) in an initial public offering last month. Shares reportedly went untraded on the first listing day due to a large volume of buy orders and demand to hold shares, Reuters reported. But today, shares have soared, with stock selling at \u00a51,135, or more than four times the \u00a5254 offering price.<\/p>\n

The news comes just days after ispace announced that its Hakuto-R lander would reach the lunar surface on April 25, a little over four months after the lander launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9. The highly anticipated touch-down will mark the first time a commercial company lands a spacecraft on the moon. ispace has back-up landing dates on April 26, May 1, and May 3, and has selected three alternative landing sites should conditions change.<\/p>\n

If successful, the firm will join the United States, China and Russia as the only entities to have landed spacecraft on the moon.<\/p>\n