The Houston company that landed on the moon this year has opened a new, larger facility outside of the Bayou City as work progresses on multiple moon returns.
Intuitive Machines Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR) said in a LinkedIn post this week that its new space in the Cromwell Business Park near Baltimore is now open. The company signed the lease for the new space in May, the Baltimore Business Journal, a Houston Business Journal sister publication, reported at the time. Baltimore-based St. John Properties owns the business park.
The new space is a significant upgrade for Intuitive Machines’ presence in Maryland. The company is moving from a 3,600-square-foot space in another property owned by St. John to a 21,117-square-foot lease at the Cromwell Business Park in Glen Burnie, Maryland.
In a statement to the HBJ, Intuitive Machines said that the company will have approximately 10,000 square feet of office space and 12,000 square feet of lab space.
"The work conducted here will include the development and deployment of lunar landers, spacecraft systems, and advanced technologies for future space missions," Intuitive Machines said. "The decision to expand in Maryland reflects IM’s commitment to enhancing its capabilities near NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and to leverage Maryland's growing space industry. The facility's proximity to GSFC offers strategic advantages, including better access to resources and collaboration opportunities."
The new facility will build off Intuitive Machines’ February 2024 moon landing by designing, building and testing spaceflight equipment for Earth orbit, lunar orbit or to traverse the moon’s surface. Work done by Intuitive Machines’ team in Maryland includes building a vehicle to carry an ice drill to the moon as well as work on a future lunar rover.
The new facility will employ 20 people at first, but the company expects that number to grow to 36 workers at full capacity. Intuitive Machines said that the decision to expand in Maryland will not affect the company's Houston operations.
"The expansion to Maryland does not imply a relocation of work from IM’s Houston Spaceport operations," Intuitive Machines said. "Instead, it complements existing operations by providing additional capabilities and space for new projects, which will strengthen the overall company capabilities and enable further growth here and in Maryland."
The ice drill project lines up with Intuitive Machines’ sold-out IM-2 mission, which is scheduled to travel to the moon’s surface around the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025. IM-2 will carry NASA’s The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain, or TRIDENT, to the moon’s surface to seek water ice underneath the moon’s surface.
Much of Intuitive Machines' previous real estate expansions came from needs for testing. The company's main manufacturing site in Houston, its $40 million Lunar Production and Operations Center, also includes a reinforced testing range for the liquid oxygen-methane engines that were on board the Odysseus lander in February. Kansas City-based Burns & McDonnell completed the center in 2023.
Jack "2fish" Fischer, vice president of production and operations at Intuitive Machines, told the Houston Business Journal in a previous interview that Houston space companies in general want to see more opportunities for testing in the Lone Star State.
"If we were to get 12 acres for a combined test facility near the [Houston Spaceport], that would be incredibly advantageous for anybody building hardware because you can go across the street," Fischer said. "We're incredibly connected to the global supply chain as well, but the more you can make it local, the more you can reduce costs, simplify testing, shorten timelines, and increase the economy around here."
Other contracts Intuitive Machine has won from NASA this year include an award to build a new lunar rover, and the company said during its most recent earnings call that it is interested in taking over NASA’s VIPER rover, which was built at the Johnson Space Center in Houston before its mission was scrapped.
The company most recently landed a $116.9 million award from NASA to carry six payloads on board a future mission to the moon — including yeast, to see how the fungus handles lunar conditions.
Intuitive Machines has had a presence in the Baltimore area since 2021, according to a news release from St. John. In the company’s 2023 annual report, Intuitive Machines said it had a team of 100 engineers working at NASA’s Goddard Space Center in Maryland as part of an awarded contract.
Intuitive Machines co-founder and board Chair Kamal Ghaffarian, who also co-founded Houston-based Axiom Space, has interests in the state as well. In Maryland, Ghaffarian founded the defense contractor Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, which was acquired by Houston-based KBR Inc. (NYSE: KBR) in 2018. Nuclear reactor developer X-Energy, which has plans for a potential plant in Texas, is also a Ghaffarian-founded company based in Maryland.
Intuitive Machines ranked No. 1 on the HBJ's Largest Houston-Area Aeronautics and Space Contractors List, based on its $59.35 million in new federal contracts awarded in fiscal year 2023.
