Intuitive Machines wins $116.9M contract for a moon mission in 2027

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Intuitive Machines, the venture-backed startup that went public last year, will send a moon lander to the lunar south pole in 2027 as part of a $116.9 million contract awarded by NASA on Thursday. 

This is NASA’s tenth award under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program; of these, four have gone to Intuitive Machines. The company will deliver six NASA payloads to the moon as part of the deal, though there will be additional payload capacity on the lander for commercial customers. 

The lunar south pole is a region of major scientific interest, due, in part, to the relative abundance of water ice that has been detected there. But the region is notoriously challenging to explore, with many parts permanently in shadow, with extremely low temperatures and rough terrain. Only a single rover has ever briefly explored the region: Indian Space Research Organisation’s Pragyan rover that was deployed from the country’s Chandrayaan-3 lander in August 2023. 

One of the six NASA payloads to hitch a ride on this mission is a suite of instruments, designed by the European Space Agency, that will remove subsurface samples of lunar regolith and analyze their composition. The samples will help assess “potential resources on the moon and to prepare technologies that may be used to extract these resources in the future,” the ESA said in a description of the payload. 

Other payloads include a radiometer that will explore the composition of the moon’s surface, an instrument that will measure how the spacecraft landing might affect the composition of the regolith and a group of retroreflectors that will help accurately determine the location of the lander. (Retroreflectors were also on Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander.) 

“The instruments on this newly awarded flight will help us achieve multiple scientific objectives and strengthen our understanding of the Moon’s environment,” Chris Culbert, manager of the CLPS initiative, said in a statement. “For example, they’ll help answer key questions about where volatiles — such as water, ice or gas — are found on the lunar surface and measure radiation in the South Pole region, which could advance our exploration efforts on the Moon and help us with continued exploration of Mars.”

Before Intuitive Machines launches this lander, it has two lunar missions in the pipeline that it must complete first: a second lunar mission that is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of this year and a mission to the Reiner Gamma region of the moon in 2025. 

Intuitive Machines launched its first lunar lander mission in February. While the lander did successfully land on the lunar surface, it came in slightly too quickly and tipped over nearly onto its side. While the landing ultimately ended the mission early, due to the positioning of the lander’s solar panels in relation to the sun, the company says the mission still proved out the lander’s core components and systems. 

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Happy Valentine's Day, space fans: Intuitive Machines, SpaceX target moon mission lift off on Feb 14

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Intuitive Machines is ready to go to the moon. The company announced Monday that its first lunar lander has completed all final integration milestones and is now encapsulated in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 payload fairing, where it will stay until launch on February 14.

The mission launch window opens at 12:57 a.m. EST; should weather or other issues delay the mission, SpaceX will have three days to execute the launch. The tight timeline comes down to the details of the mission: The lander is taking a direct trajectory to the moon, and it is targeting a site near the lunar south pole, where specific lighting conditions for landing are only available a few days each month.

This will be Intuitive Machines’ first lunar mission. The Houston-based company was founded 11 years ago by Stephen Altemus, who serves as president and CEO; Tim Crain, CTO; and prolific space industry entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian. The company was early to see the commercial promise of the moon; it received its contract from NASA for this mission back in 2019. More recently, Intuitive Machines went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company in February 2023, though the transaction generated less capital than was initially projected.

There will likely be a lot of eyes on the mission, given that it follows on the heels of an unsuccessful attempt by another American company, Astrobotic, whose lander failed to reach the moon due to a disastrous propellant leak. That spacecraft burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere as part of a coordinated reentry plan on January 18.

Both companies were selected for their respective missions as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, designed to solicit transportation services to the moon from private industry. In total, NASA is paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver its six science and technology payloads to the lunar surface.

The CLPS program is also a key part of the agency’s Artemis program; the idea is that commercial providers deliver scientific payloads to the surface, which will collect data and inform future crewed moon missions.

Intuitive Machines is hoping to pave the way for commercial success in the nascent lunar economy, with the company working on not just lunar landers but a lunar data relay service, a lunar rover and other technologies and services for both the moon’s surface and cislunar space.

“The IM-1 mission’s success will lay the groundwork for a burgeoning lunar economy, opening new possibilities for research, commerce, and exploration,” the company said in a press kit published last week. “By advancing our capabilities to operate on the lunar surface, the mission sets the stage for more ambitious endeavors, including the establishment of lunar bases and the exploration of potential resources.”

In addition to the six NASA payloads, the lander will also carry a handful of commercial payloads for customers including Columbia Sportswear and the contemporary artist Jeff Koons. The lander, dubbed Odysseus, is expected to operate for seven days on the moon before the long and cold lunar night sets in.

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Intuitive Machines' second moon mission on track for 2024

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Intuitive Machines’ second moon mission is still on track to launch before the end of this year, after the company only had to make minor adjustments to the lunar lander design, executives said during an earnings call Thursday.

The company made history earlier this year when it became the first commercial company to land a spacecraft on the lunar surface. That mission, called IM-1, was not without its quirks — the lander ultimately came in a little too hot and ended up tipped over on the surface — but it proved out the lander’s core components, engine, and subsystems.

That same lander class, which the company calls Nova-C, will be returning to the moon later this year in that second mission. Critically, the IM-2 mission will deliver NASA payloads that will search the lunar South Pole for water ice, a resource that could eventually be processed into propulsion for rockets or to support a permanent lunar astronaut habitat.

The Intuitive Machines team identified just “a handful of adjustments” that will be implemented on the second lander, CEO Steve Altemus said during the earnings call.

“We really don’t see any impacts to the schedule based on the changes from IM-1,” he said. “They are fairly straightforward.”

Among the changes that the company will be implementing are improvements to the laser rangefinder switch system, he added. The laser rangefinders are a navigational subsystem on the lander, and they help determine variables like altitude and horizontal velocity. Mission controllers learned very late in the game that the laser rangefinders on the first lander were not functional — because engineers did not turn on a physical switch on the component while it was still on the ground. (They managed to land the spacecraft anyway through some very quick thinking.)

The second mission may be impacted because NASA is still finalizing the landing site, which will be somewhere on the lunar south pole on a ridge near the Shackleton crater. When the space agency originally announced the landing site location for the IM-2 mission, they noted that data from the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft indicated that the area could have ice below the surface.

Intuitive Machines ended the fourth quarter of 2023 with $30.6 million in revenue and a cash balance of just $4.5 million. That number was given a significant boost after an intuitional investor exercised $50.6 million in warrants and the company closed a $10 million strategic equity investment.

As a result of these investments, as of March 1, the company’s cash balance swelled to nearly $55 million — the largest balance “relative to any quarter-end” since the company went public in February 2023.

Beyond the second moon mission, 2024 will likely be a pivotal year for the company, which is awaiting the decision on NASA awards that could be extremely lucrative. That includes the award for the Lunar Terrain Vehicle, which NASA will announce early next month, and the next lunar lander contract under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.