Intuitive Machines

Intuitive Machines, Inc. is an American space exploration company headquartered in Houston, Texas. It was founded in 2013 by Stephen Altemus, Kam Ghaffarian, and Tim Crain, to provide commercial and government exploration of the Moon. Today the company offers lunar surface access for transportation and payload delivery, data transmission services, and infrastructure-as-a-service. NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines five lunar surface delivery task orders through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. In 2021 Northrop Grumman announced they would team with Lunar Outpost, Intuitive Machines and Michelin to design a Lunar Terrain Vehicle. Intuitive Machines, LLC, went public in February 2023 after merging with Inflection Point Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company. The company is incorporated in Delaware, and trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol, LUNR. Intuitive Machines' Lunar Payload Delivery Services (LPDS) program seeks to open commercial access to the Moon. NASA selected Intuitive Machines' LPDS program for four lunar missions. In February 2024, Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander experienced a soft but unstable landing on the lunar surface, ultimately tipping over and receiving minimal data from payloads before entirely losing communications. Despite not meeting many mission objectives, Odysseus is the first American spacecraft to land on the surface of the Moon since the Apollo Program, and the mission is considered a partial success by most industry experts. The next Intuitive Machines' lunar mission (IM-2 and the Athena lander) in March 2025 suffered the same fate as its predecessor, tipping over due to problems with the lander's laser altimeter.