©Reuters. Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft passes over the near side of the Moon after insertion into lunar orbit on February 21, 2024, in this image published February 22, 2024. Intuitive Machines/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE SUPPLIED
By Akash Sriram, Harshita Mary Varghese and Joey Roulette
(Reuters) -Shares of lunar lander maker Intuitive Machines fell 30% in extended trading, erasing a rally on Friday after the company said its spacecraft overturned shortly after touching the lunar surface on day before. Shares of the first private company to successfully land on the Moon nearly doubled, rising from $4.98 before the Feb. 15 launch to $9.59 at Friday’s close. Friday’s sell-off left it below $7.
However, the company said the Odysseus spacecraft is “alive and well” and engineers are sending commands to the vehicle, and NASA officials at a news conference praised the effort.
The first landing on the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft in more than half a century has thrilled investors in other space startups, sending shares of companies such as Astra Space and Satellogic soaring. In after-hours trading they slipped between 0.5% and 2.8%.
Stephen Altemus, CEO of Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander, said the vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface during its final descent and overturned , stopping on one side. leaning on a rock.
He said teams are working to obtain the first photographic images from the lunar surface at the landing site.
Company executives said all of the lander’s active payloads — all payloads except one, a work of art — were facing upward and are expected to meet their science goals.
Andres Sheppard, a senior analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, Intuitive Machines’ investment banking partner, had before news of the capsizing described the landing as a major achievement that should raise awareness and credibility across the entire space industry and new companies.
Friday’s excitement had pushed Intuitive Machines’ stock market value close to $1 billion.
However, according to LSEG data, only 18% of the company’s shares are available for trading on the stock market, with the majority of Intuitive Machines shares held by insiders and major investors. That makes the more than $850 million worth of company shares traded Friday a huge turnover for a single session.
The Texas-based company’s lunar lander landed on the Malapert A crater on Thursday, about 300 km (190 miles) from the Moon’s south pole.
It was sent to the Moon last Thursday using a Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The company, co-founded in 2013 by serial space industry investor Kam Ghaffarian and NASA veterans Altemus and Tim Crain, is awaiting the first images from the lunar surface.
The landing could open doors to investment and government contracts, helping space companies get through what has been a difficult period for funding due to an uncertain economy.
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The landing marked the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972, when NASA’s last crewed mission docked on the moon with astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.
Intuitive Machines spent about $100 million developing its Odysseus lander, CEO Altemus told Reuters last year.
“We had to build an entire lunar program, not just a lander,” he said at the time.
The company’s lander development also received $118 million in NASA funding under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an effort to spur private development of lunar landers capable of shipping cargo at low cost. lower than the U.S. space agency’s traditional construction and launch method. those lunar vehicles themselves.
“We think we can meet all the needs of commercial payloads,” Altemus said during Friday’s briefing.
Private company Astrobotic made the first attempt to launch to the Moon under the CLPS program last month, but a loss of propulsion doomed the mission. Texas-based Firefly Space, backed by private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, is expected to send its Blue Ghost lander to the moon later this year.
Ghaffarian, who is also a co-founder of Axiom Space, serves on the boards of other space organizations and has held numerous technical and management roles at Lockheed Martin (NYSE:), Ford (NYSE:) Aerospace and Loral.
CEO Altemus joined NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and shuttle program in 1989, where he held several positions working in launch and landing activities.