Miki Ito joined Astroscale Japan Inc. as President in April 2015. While working as a full-time engineer for the key technology demonstration mission of ELSA-d, she advocates its mission and gives lectures on STEM educational programs. Prior to Astroscale, she worked as a researcher at JASTEC coaching international students from overseas in satellite manufacturing. As a researcher at NESTRA, Ms. Ito participated in the HODOYOSHI-3 and HODOYOSHI-4 microsatellites projects, which were developed by University of Tokyo under FIRST (World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology program), funded by the Japanese government. In this role, she was involved in thermal and structure design and test operations.
In 2018, Ms. Ito was chosen as “Forbes Emergent 25” and Nikkei’s “Nikkei Woman of The Year 2018”. She holds a Master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Nihon University.