ispace Announces New Lander Model "ULTRA" Integrating Japanese and U.S. Landers

・ Development delays for the "VoidRunner" engine, planned for the APEX 1.0 lander in Mission 3, necessitate a switch to an alternative engine.

・ Responding to the globally increasing demand for lunar development, ispace announces the new integrated Japanese and U.S. lander model "ULTRA" to meet customer expectations for mission quality and development efficiency.

・ In light of the engine change and lander model integration, and following discussions with NASA and Mission 3 partner Draper, the U.S. mission schedule has been revised, with the launch now set for 2030*¹. This means ispace's next lunar landing mission will be in 2028.

*¹ This U.S. mission is selected under NASA's CLPS Task Order CP-12, with our company as part of Team Draper. Execution of CP-12 under the new schedule is pending formal approval from NASA.

ispace, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan, Representative Director & CEO: Takeshi Hakamada, hereinafter "ispace") (TSE: 9348) held a Business Strategy Update on March 27, 2026 (Friday) in Nihonbashi, Tokyo.

Our U.S. subsidiary, ispace technologies U.S., inc. (hereinafter "ispace-U.S."), has been developing the APEX 1.0 lander for Mission 3, selected under NASA's CLPS Task Order CP-12 as part of Team Draper, with a target launch in 2027. As previously announced, the development of the new engine "VoidRunner," planned for this lander, has encountered delays at Agile Space Industries (hereinafter "Agile") in demonstrating the required fuel efficiency. Following careful observation of the engine's development status, we have determined that a change in the development plan is necessary to adopt a new alternative engine to ensure the successful execution of lunar landing missions.

Meanwhile, interest in lunar development is rapidly increasing globally, particularly in Japan and the United States. In the U.S., a presidential order aims to establish a lunar base and nuclear reactor by 2030 under the Trump administration. In Japan, the importance of the space sector and strengthening cooperation with the U.S. from an economic security perspective are being discussed under the Kishida administration. In this context, our customers, primarily space agencies and private companies from various countries, have heightened expectations for mission quality and efficiency. While we have been developing two types of lander models in parallel in Japan and the U.S., and have been standardizing engine procurement, software development, and know-how gained from our past two lunar missions, we have concluded that integrating both the APEX 1.0 lander and the Series 3 lander (tentative name) is necessary to further improve quality and reliably meet market expectations. We plan to equip and operate our landers for Mission 4 and beyond with this alternative engine.

Based on the aforementioned engine change and the integration of lander models, and following careful discussions with our key customer, Draper, we have decided to reschedule the launch of the U.S. mission to 2030.

Mission 3 is a mission selected under NASA's CLPS Task Order CP-12, with our company as part of Team Draper. While we will be discussing specific contract modifications with NASA, ispace and Draper are confident that the modified mission and CP-12 will provide an opportunity to fully leverage the technical and operational insights and achievements gained from our two previous lunar landing missions, and will be beneficial to NASA. We will also sequentially discuss modifications to transportation contracts with other Mission 3 customers.

The new integrated model, which will maximize the technical learnings from our past missions and contribute to accelerating lunar development, has been named "ULTRA," meaning "transcendence" in Latin.

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