NASA cancels mission to the far side of the Moon: $73 million project halted

14:28 / 18.07.2026·35·Technology

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Draper have agreed to cancel the CP-12 mission, which aimed to land on the far side of the Moon. The termination of this project under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program was caused by significant development delays and schedule slippage. Originally planned for 2025, the flight was pushed to the 2030s due to technical changes in the spacecraft. This is reported by Ixbt.com reports .

The total value of the contract signed in 2022 was $73 million. According to reports, NASA paid Draper $43 million for work completed before the project was halted. The landing module for the mission was being prepared by the ispace-U.S. division of the Japanese company ispace, but after the main contract was canceled, the subcontractor also lost its order.

Technical issues and schedule delays

During the project, engineers faced serious obstacles several times. In 2023, the hardware design was reworked to accommodate NASA's scientific instruments. By 2025, a decision was made to replace the engine, and later, the need to switch to a unified Ultra platform arose. Such changes pushed the spacecraft's readiness date to 2030–2031, which did not align with the agency's plans.

The CP-12 mission was intended to deliver three key scientific suites to the Schrödinger basin on the far side of the Moon:

Farside Seismic Suite (FSS) — to record moonquakes;
Lunar Interior Temperature and Materials Suite — to measure subsurface heat flow and electrical conductivity;
Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Lite (LuSEE-Lite) — to study surface electric and magnetic fields.

NASA does not intend to abandon this scientific program entirely. The agency is already planning to integrate the prepared equipment into other CLPS missions under the future Moon Base and Artemis programs. However, this will not be easy, as most current commercial landers are designed for the near side of the Moon, complicating the deployment of specialized equipment like seismic stations.

This is not the first failure under the CLPS program. Previously, the contract with Orbit Beyond was canceled in 2019, and another project was halted in 2022 due to the bankruptcy of Masten Space Systems. Nevertheless, ispace announced that it will continue to participate in space programs and intends to compete in future CLPS 2.0 tenders.