Houston-based Intuitive Machines (Nasdaq: LUNR) has completed its Lunar Operations and Production Center and is preparing to send its first lunar lander product to Florida in support of a NASA mission.
Intuitive Machines broke ground on the $40 million center at the Houston Spaceport in December 2021. The center spans 12.5 acres and includes 125,000 square feet of office and production space, including 45-foot cranes intended to move the landers through the facility. Intuitive Machines opened the facility on Sept. 29. Kansas City-based Burns & McConnell designed and built the center.
Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said during an Aug. 15 earnings call that the company’s Nova Lunar Lander could be ready for a moon landing as early as Nov. 15, though an exact date is conditional on NASA’s launch schedule and the availability of SpaceX rockets. Intuitive Machines would be the first private company to touch down on the moon’s surface.
The planned moon mission, IM-1, is funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which is intended to reestablish a presence on the moon. Intuitive Machines won the CLPS bid in 2018. NASA is also planning its third Artemis mission, which will be the agency’s first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years following Apollo 17 in 1972.
Intuitive Machines is one of the Houston Spaceport’s three anchor tenants, and all three have either completed or are developing infrastructure at the Ellington Airport site. North Carolina-based Collins Aerospace, a division of Raytheon Technologies (NYSE: RTX), opened a 120,000-square-foot facility in September 2022. Meanwhile, Houston-based Axiom Space broke ground on a new headquarters there in May 2022.
All three companies have been tapped for roles in the Artemis III mission. Aside from the lunar lander, both Axiom and Collins announced contracts with NASA through the agency’s Extravehicular Activity Services award in July 2023. Both companies are working on spacesuits for NASA, and Axiom completed a previous $228.5 million contract for the agency earlier in 2023.
Intuitive Machines went public in February 2023 through a special purpose acquisition merger with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. Intuitive Machines was co-founded in 2013 by Altemus, who was formerly a deputy director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, and Kam Ghaffarian, who was also a co-founder of Axiom Space.
If all goes to plan, the Nova lander’s launch will be the second Houston-based private space mission this year, following Axiom’s successful Axiom Mission 2, which took researchers to the International Space Station. Axiom partnered with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the mission and went on to close a $350 million Series C funding round led by the Saudi Arabia-based firm Aljazira Capital in August, one of the largest funding rounds in Houston this year.
The advances in Texas-based companies such as Axiom Space, SpaceX and Intuitive Machines led professional services firm PriceWaterCoopers to rank the Lone Star State first in the nation in aerospace investment in a recent report.
According to Business in Texas, the aerospace, aviation and defense sector accounts for $3.8 billion in total wages and employs about 140,000 people in total. Locally, the Houston area is home to 500 companies and institutions that work in the aerospace, space and aviation sector.
