By Elias Schisgall
Intuitive Machines received a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration worth up to $148.3 million to deliver equipment to the Moon.
Under the firm-fixed-price contract, the company is supposed to deliver a production-line-qualified Nova-C Moon lander by 2028 at the latest. The contract includes a $68.6 million base for mission execution and a $79.7 million performance incentive to demonstrate product-line qualification.
The company said it plans to scale manufacturing processes to support high volumes of production, building towards a repeatable lunar transport service to support NASA's ambitions to build a base on the Moon.
"We are shifting the paradigm from custom aerospace engineering to commercial mass production of lunar infrastructure," Chief Executive Officer Steve Altemus. "This contract directly advances our core mission to provide persistent, reliable, and commercial baseline of transport, connectivity, and operations that allows our customers to stay longer and achieve more on the Moon."
Write to Elias Schisgall at elias.schisgall@wsj.com