ESA awards 65,000,000 EUR Phase 2 MAGPIE contract to ispace-EUROPE

ESA and ispace-EUROPE announced on 2026-09-02 that the Phase 2 agreement for MAGPIE was officially signed.

ESA had announced the Phase 2 contract award to ispace-EUROPE in 2026-07, with a value of 65,000,000 EUR.

The signing announcement was made on 2026-09-02 at the ESA Space for Inspiration 2026 main stage in Copenhagen.

The Phase 2 contract was announced in 2026-07, with ESA awarding it to ispace-EUROPE and a value of 65,000,000 EUR.

MAGPIE is identified as Europe's first lunar surface exploration mission and is scheduled to launch in 2029.

The payload will fly on ispace inc.'s Mission 4 ULTRA lunar lander, and the landing site is the lunar south pole.

The Mission 4 lander is funded through a grant from Japan's Space Strategy Fund Program, administered by JAXA, and MAGPIE is an ESA and JAXA collaboration.

ispace-EUROPE is based in Luxembourg and serves as prime contractor to ESA, while the MAGPIE consortium includes scientific and engineering contributors from five European countries.

Payloads include Technische Universität München's instrumented drill Volatiles Sampler, ESR Technology's Drill Translation Unit and The Open University's Ion Trap Mass Spectrometer Volatile Analyzer.

RAL Space leads joint assembly and testing work for the Volatile Analyzer.

The agreement gives a European lunar surface mission a prime contractor and a contract value of 65,000,000 EUR.

It also ties MAGPIE to a specific lander, a lunar south pole landing site and named payloads for drilling, translation and volatile analysis.

MAGPIE is scheduled to launch in 2029.