A critical announcement determining the fate of “independence” and “commercialization” in Japan’s private space development has been made. Space One Co., Ltd., a space startup headquartered in Tokyo, officially announced on December 15, 2025, that it will launch the third vehicle of its small solid-fuel rocket, KAIROS, on February 25, 2026.
On November 4, 2025, Japan’s Ministry of the Environment announced that the number of bear sightings nationwide in the first half of the fiscal year (April–September) had reached 20,792 cases (preliminary figure).
On April 8, 2025, Japan’s regenerative medicine reached a historic turning point. Cuorips Inc., a biotech venture spun out of Osaka University, announced it had submitted a marketing authorization application to Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) for a “cardiomyocyte sheet” created from human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. This is believed to be the world’s first marketing application aiming to commercialize a regenerative medicine product using iPS cells, and it has generated great anticipation across the scientific and medical communities.