May 5, 2026
TOKYO – Yamaguchi Prefecture-based sake maker Dassai Inc. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. said they had successfully fermented the ingredients for sake aboard the International Space Station and used the resulting fermenting mash to produce 116 milliliters of sake back on Earth.
One 100-milliliter bottle was sold for ¥110 million to a Japanese buyer, the companies said. The proceeds will be donated in a way that supports Japan’s space development efforts.
Since 2024, the two companies have been working on the Dassai Moon Project, an initiative aimed at eventually producing sake on the lunar surface. In October 2025, they loaded the raw ingredients and a jointly developed brewing device onto the H3, the flagship rocket of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, and transported them to the ISS.
The experiment was conducted inside JAXA’s testing equipment, where the fermentation process was monitored for two weeks under conditions simulating lunar gravity. The roughly 260 grams of fermenting mash, called moromi, produced in the test reached an alcohol content of 12%, demonstrating that sake can be brewed using the same methods as on Earth, the companies said.
The moromi arrived at the brewery at Dassai’s headquarters on March 13, and production of the sake was completed on March 24. The company also said it would work with Tohoku University to analyze components of the sake lees and other byproducts.