Intuitive Machines, Inc. (NASDAQ: LUNR) hesitated to begin Tuesday. The Houston-based firm, a leading space technology, infrastructure, and services company, today announced that it has been selected by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to provide the spacecraft platform, system-level integration, and mission solutions for EAGLE-VSWIR, an Earth observation mission under NASA's Earth Science Division.
EAGLE-VSWIR (Explorer for Artemis Geology, Lunar, and Earth – Visible to Shortwave Infrared) will fly on the IM 300TM spacecraft bus and is targeted for launch in 2028. The mission will be equipped with a hyperspectral visible to shortwave infrared (VSWIR) instrument designed to perform surface biology and geology observations from Earth orbit while demonstrating technologies that could support future lunar and Mars exploration missions.
The award marks the second NASA low Earth orbit science mission Intuitive Machines is supporting. As discussed on a previous earnings call, Intuitive Machines was selected to provide an IM 500 spacecraft bus and system-level integration for NASA's EDGE (Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer) mission, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and led by Principal Investigator Dr. Helen Amanda Fricker of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
"NASA's science missions are being asked to deliver faster and inside tighter cost caps, and that is exactly the problem our platforms solve," said Anand Mahendra, Chief Growth Officer, Intuitive Machines.
LUNR shares withered 76 cents, or 3.7%, to $19.62.
