NYK reports that it has made an equity investment in ocean-tech startup Oceanic Constellations to support the mass production of unmanned surface vessels (USV).
The investment, through a third-party allotment of new shares, will also support NYK’s participation in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Space Strategy Fund by providing access to integrated environmental simulation technology that can recreate marine conditions, which NYK will use to verify the feasibility of an offshore recovery system for reusable rockets.
This recovery project, which received approval in principle from ClassNK in 2025, involves use of a specialised vessel to capture falling rocket stages at sea.
In December 2025, NYK signed a service agreement with Oceanic Constellations for software development and scenario validation for the space project. This followed a joint demonstration agreement between Oceanic Constellations and Keihin Dock, an NYK Group company, which is currently supporting the assembly and testing of the vessels.
Oceanic Constellations was founded in November 2023 and has since filed 25 patents related to swarm-control technology, which coordinates multiple vehicles to function as a distributed sensor and communication network.
The company is currently working to reach full-scale commercialisation of its tracking and monitoring systems by 2027.
