Miki Ito joined Astroscale Japan in 2015 and appointed as Managing Director in the same year. She was also engaged in engineering work, working on the development of “ELSA-d,” a demonstration satellite. Following the structural change of the company, she was appointed as General Manager in February 2019, and then as Managing Director in August 2022.
Prior to Astroscale, Miki worked as a researcher at JASTEC to coach international students from oversea in satellite manufacturing. She also worked as a researcher at NESTRA where she participated in the HODOYOSHI-3 and HODOYOSHI-4 microsatellites projects, which were developed by University of Tokyo under the FIRST (Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology) program funded by the Japanese Government. In this role Miki was involved in thermal and structure design as well as test operations.
In 2018, Miki was chosen as ‘Forbes Emergent 25’ and Nikkei’s ‘Nikkei Woman of The Year 2018.’Miki holds a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Nihon University.