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NASA's Exit From CLPS Task CP-12 Puts ispace's US Lander Subcontract on Track to End

NASA and Draper mutually cancelled the CLPS CP-12 lunar-transport task order on July 9, and ispace's US subsidiary now expects its own lander subcontract with Draper to follow suit, though the Tokyo-listed company says it already excluded that revenue from its forecast for the year to March 2027 back in March.

Jul 15, 20262 min readispace,inc.9348
A lunar lander test article stands on a workshop platform in a clean room, its cabling unplugged and tools set aside, suggesting a paused development program.

NASA and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory agreed on July 9 to mutually terminate Draper's Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order known as CP-12. The knock-on effect lands on ispace: the Tokyo-listed lunar venture said its US subsidiary, ispace technologies U.S., inc., now expects its own subcontract with Draper on the same program to end as well.

Draper, a nonprofit defense and aerospace research house based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and led by director and CEO Jerry Wohletz, won the CP-12 task order from NASA in July 2022. ispace-U.S. then signed on as Draper's subcontractor, developing a lunar lander and preparing it for operation under CP-12's lunar transport services. That work is now headed for a formal wind-down; ispace said it will disclose separately once the termination of its own subcontract is confirmed.

The company says the retreat will not touch its consolidated earnings forecast for the year to March 2027. Revenue tied to the CP-12 subcontract had already been pulled from that forecast after a March 27 mission-schedule overhaul, when ispace introduced a combined Japan-US lander model and reset its US mission timetable. In other words, the numbers took the hit months ago; this week's disclosure just confirms which contract created the gap.

What is still open is timing and scope: ispace has not yet declared the Draper subcontract formally over, only that termination is expected following NASA's own exit from CP-12, and it has committed to a prompt update once that status is finalized.