Japanese space company ispace has so far invested more than $40 million in its new U.S. subsidiary to capitalize on growing investment from NASA and the Pentagon in lunar landing technology. CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in a statement that this level of investment signals ispace's "strong commitment to the U.S. market."
"We expect this number to continue to grow as part of our strategic commitment to contribute to government missions and build a Star-Moon ecosystem in the United States," he added.
The U.S. subsidiary is called ispace technologies U.S. and has more than 80 employees in Denver, Colorado. Ronald J. Garan, a former NASA astronaut and senior vice president of WorldView, was appointed CEO of the U.S. branch in June this year.
ispace also released a new lander called Apex 1.0, which will replace the previous iteration of the lander Series 2. Apex 1.0 is designed for short-trajectory lunar flights and is capable of carrying up to 300 kilograms of items to the lunar surface. This is a 10-fold improvement over the carrying capacity of ispace’s first lander Series 1.
Apex 1.0 will be launched on ispace's third mission. This mission will be carried out in cooperation with Draper Laboratory to deliver payloads to the far side of the moon for NASA. The $73 million contract was awarded last summer to Draper Laboratory, ispace, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems and Systima Technologies, a unit of Kaman Space & Defense. iSpace said the mission date was pushed back from 2025 to 2026 in part due to the transition from the Lander 2 design to Apex 1.0.
Team Draper is one of several companies to win contracts under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic also received awards from the program, all vying to be the first to land a commercial lander on the moon.
"The updated schedule allows the Draper team and ispace America to leverage Apex 1.0 enhancements to meet sensitive payload requirements for Mission 3, which targets a technically challenging landing site on the far side of the moon," the company explained in a statement.
The new lander will be more than ten times more capable than ispace's first lander, Series 1, whose test launch suffered a devastating impact on the lunar surface in April.