This woman from Japan has shaken up the space and time continuum of the Japanese Space Industry by creating a simple solution to really complex problems.

As a child, Naomi’s visit to Space World, a theme park in Japan, left a deep impact on her. Since then she loved everything about Space - books on the subject, stories about people who had been to space or worked in space, science fiction stories, you name it. She dreamt of going to Space as a young girl, without knowing that her daydreams would one day lead her to solve some real problems in the space industry. This interest inspired her to create a career in Space Engineering and she eventually obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Kyushu Institute of Technology. This was the time she saw the gaps within the Space industry and where the idea for Infostellar was born.

In 2016, she created Infostellar - which is a software-driven space communications infrastructure company. They address a very unique problem. When any company launches their own satellite, it also creates a ground station to maintain communication with it. However, due to the moving velocity of satellites, these ground stations can actually get a limited time when they can communicate with the launched satellite. The rest of the time, these ground based stations are lying completely unused. This further impacts the cost of the satellite, making those limited time cost hugely to these companies whilst being unable to communicate with their satellite the rest of the time. This is the problem Infostellar addresses - they have built a cloud-based platform called StellarStation, which allows satellite operators to choose among the various ground stations to communicate with their satellites and it also allows the ground stations to rent out their free and idle time - making it a win-win for both. So Infostellar is basically an Airbnb for satellite infrastructure!

A woman of big dreams that stretch right up to space, when asked how she sees the future she says “I aim to go to space, however for most people this is not an option, so I want to create a world in which people travelling to space is as easy as going on vacation via aeroplane. I want to create the infrastructure for communication between the Earth and Space, which will be necessary for our future advancements, and that’s why I started Infostellar.”

Did she face any challenges on the way I ask: of course she did. For a company that is innovative and breaking both ground rules and space rules, there are many challenges. Creating a great team is both her biggest challenge and her biggest achievement too. To create a supportive and aligned team to follow through such unique vision takes time, patience, energy and some very tough decisions. “Our goal is big, it can be very challenging and at times it just seems like a dream, but the team members believe in Infostellar’s success and spend their time helping to achieve our goals. I feel that that is my biggest success, and somewhat a miracle.”Naomi says.

The journey of an entrepreneur is often a solitary one, and when the industry is so unique, more so. Whenever people leave her company, Naomi feels the pain only a Founder-Entrepreneur faces. The buck stops at her table. But her resolve is as strong as steel - she will never give up on her dreams or Infostellar until the very last moment. Equipped with deep roots of knowledge and insight and wings to fly all the way to space, Naomi is sure to change the world, one satellite at a time.