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Intuitive Machines’ cargo moon lander known as “Odysseus” became the first privately developed spacecraft to land on the lunar surface.
The company’s stock jumped 16% in trading Friday.
“This validates the company’s technology and adds significant credibility to the business,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Andres Sheppard wrote in a note to investors.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander on display at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Shares of Intuitive Machines jumped 16% in trading Friday after the company’s successful first moon landing.
Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C cargo moon lander known as “Odysseus” on Thursday became the first privately developed spacecraft to land on the lunar surface — as well as the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on the moon in more than 50 years.

The company, based in Houston, Texas, confirmed that the IM-1 mission lander was standing upright and sending data back to Earth.
“Odysseus has found his new home,” Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ CTO and IM-1 mission director, said Thursday evening from the company’s mission control.
Intuitive Machines stock initially ripped 40% higher before paring gains with heavy trading volume to close at $9.59 a share. The company has a market valuation of about $1 billion.

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The company’s stock has been rallying over the past month as excitement built in the lead-up to and progress of the IM-1 mission. Intuitive Machines went public via a SPAC a year ago and shares had steadily slid to all-time lows near $2 in January.

Stock chart icon

Intuitive Machines stock over the last 5 days.

Wall Street analysts emphasized to CNBC ahead of the landing that the unprecedented nature of the event could lead to volatile momentum trading.

“We’ve never witnessed a publicly traded company go through [a moon landing attempt]. So this is new, not just for investors, but for us analysts as well,” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Andres Sheppard said before the landing.
In a note to investors after the landing, Cantor Fitzgerald increased its price target on Intuitive Machines’ stock to $13 a share from $4 a share.
“In our view, this validates the company’s technology and adds significant credibility to the business. As such, we believe Intuitive Machines is now very well positioned to continue to capitalize on the growing commercial space economy, and on subsequent launches,” Sheppard wrote in the note.

The IM-1 lander “Odysseus” in lunar orbit on Feb. 21, 2024.
Intuitive Machines

Intuitive Machines, in a statement Friday morning, said that “Odysseus is alive and well,” noting that the lander is charging its solar panels.
“Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the vehicle to download science data,” the company said.
The company and NASA plan to hold a press conference at 5 p.m. ET on Friday.
The Odysseus lander carried 12 government and commercial payloads — six of which are for NASA under a $118 million contract through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.
Intuitive Machines has already won two more CLPS contracts for future lander missions, with IM-2 expected to launch as early as the second half of this year.
Additionally, the company has part of a five-year $719 million contract to provide engineering services to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Analysts expect the Goddard contract is worth about $11 million per month in revenue for Intuitive Machines, with Cantor Fitzgerald estimating the company will bring in about $338 million in fiscal year 2024 revenue. More

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has harped on free cash flow generation, but it’s unclear investors care.
Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday said it ended the year with $6.2 billion in free cash flow, up 86% from a year prior.
But the company’s shares fell 10% on Friday, and are down about 45% in the past year.

The “Bobs” from the film Office Space
Source: 20th Century Fox | YouTube

Listening to Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav speak on Friday’s fourth-quarter earnings calls, I couldn’t help but think of a scene in the movie “Office Space.”
An employee named Tom meets with two consultants, both named Bob (together, The Bobs), who have been tasked with deciding which employees at the company should be promoted or fired.

When The Bobs press Tom on what he does at the company after they don’t initially understand, Tom snaps, screaming, “I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can’t you understand that?! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!”
Warner Bros. Discovery investors are The Bobs, Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav is Tom and the disconnect he’s worked up about is free cash flow.
Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday said it generated $3.3 billion in free cash flow during the fourth quarter and ended the year with $6.2 billion in free cash flow, up 86% from a year prior. Yet it missed analyst estimates for revenue and profit, and its shares fell 10%.
For more than year, Zaslav has repeatedly told the investment community that his priority is to boost free cash flow to improve the health of the company and to pay down debt. Warner Bros. Discovery has paid down $12.4 billion in debt in less than two years since announcing the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia.
He led with that message again on Friday during his company’s earnings conference call.

“Our top priority this year was to get this company on solid footing and on a pathway to growth, and we’ve done that,” Zaslav said. “We said we’d be less than four-times levered, and we are. We’re now at 3.9 times and expect to continue to delever in 2024. We’ve significantly enhanced the efficiency of the organization with a long runway still to go. We said we were going to generate meaningful free cash flow. … And we’ve exceeded our goal with $6.2 billion for the year.”

David Zaslav attends the world premiere of “The Flash”, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 12, 2023.
Mike Blake | Reuters

Warner Bros. Discovery’s board of directors has been so intent on boosting cash that it last year changed Zaslav’s compensation to tie his bonus to cash flow generation.
So, why did the shares slump Friday, down now 45% in the past 12 months?
Perhaps investors didn’t like the company’s wishy-washy answer on free cash flow generation in 2024, fearing the positive momentum there could be short-lived.
CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels refused to give guidance, citing the company’s unknown earnings performance with the vicissitudes of the advertising market and increased content spend on Max now that strikes by Hollywood writers and actors are over.
But it’s more likely, given the stock’s consistent underperformance in the past year, that investors simply don’t care about free cash flow in the way Zaslav wants them to. (Remember, that Netflix fairly recently tried, and failed, to refocus investor sentiment onto its preferred metrics. Shares only started rising when Netflix returned to subscriber growth, from which Netflix tried to redirect.)
Legacy media needs a growth narrative. It’s needed one for the past year. Cutting spending, trashing films, licensing programming to Netflix, laying off employees, saving money because of strikes — these aren’t growth stories.
If earnings and revenue miss estimates, and if the company isn’t adding tens of millions Max subscribers, there’s not all that much for shareholders to get excited about.
Zaslav’s argument is his company’s balance sheet must be in good shape before growth can begin. But it’s unclear where that growth will occur. Boosting free cash flow and paying down debt may make Zaslav richer, but they’re not clear catalysts for multiple expansion for a company saddled with slowly dying cable networks and associated declining advertising revenue.
Just because Zaslav wants investors to focus on free cash flow instead of metrics like streaming service subscriber additions, profit and revenue doesn’t mean they’ll listen.
Just because a worker says he’s a people person doesn’t make him a people person, no matter how many times, or how loudly, he repeats it.
WATCH: Investors are surprised by Warner Bros. Discovery’s lack of full-year guidance

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Health officials are trying to find ways to ensure equitable access to the breakthrough, high-cost gene therapies for sickle cell disease.
The disease, which can cause bouts of debilitating pain, affects an estimated 100,000 Americans, most of whom are Black people or people of color.
The Biden administration will negotiate discounts for the federal and state Medicaid programs with the makers of the treatments, Vertex Pharmaceuticals and Bluebird Bio.

The approval of two gene therapies to treat sickle cell disease has given hope to patients who suffer from the debilitating disease, which overwhelmingly affects Black people and people of color.
Health officials now face a challenge in finding a way to provide equitable access to the costly treatments.

The crippling episodes of pain from the genetic blood disorder make life unpredictable for patients like Michael Goodwin. Sickle cell has forced him to leave his job and at times taken him away from his family.
“I can be in the hospital 20 days out of the month sometimes,” said the 36-year-old Goodwin. “I’ve been in hospital a lot more as I’ve gotten older, which hurts me, because I have a son now and I’m married.”
Still, he’s hesitant to try the new one-time gene therapies because they require months of intensive medical preparation, including chemotherapy, to prepare patients’ bone marrow stem cells for extraction and gene editing.
Goodwin also worries about the cost. Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ gene therapy Casgevy lists for $2.2 million, while Bluebird Bio’s treatment Lyfgenia lists for $3.1 million.
“I do have insurance, but … I already have medical bills,” he said.

The therapies were cheered as a long-awaited breakthrough to treat the disease when they were approved in December. But the hurdles toward ensuring equitable access, and the lack of infrastructure in place to administer the nascent treatments, have raised questions about just how many people will benefit from them.

Blood sample of patient positive tested for sickle cell.
Kitsawet Saethao | Istock | Getty Images

Goodwin’s hesitancy to pursue treatment is no surprise to Dr. Julie Kanter, director of the Adult Sickle Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“My guess is even if we opened the gates today to everybody getting this therapy, at most only 10% of those individuals affected by sickle cell would want this therapy,” said Kanter, who also serves as the president of the National Alliance of Sickle Cell Centers. “And even that would be too much for us to manage right this second.”
More than 100,000 Americans have sickle cell disease, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, and between 50% and 60% of them covered are covered by the federal and state insurance program Medicaid.
Kanter said it will take time to ramp up capacity and to set up facilities across the country to treat patients at scale.
“We really hope that having the National Alliance of Sickle Cell Centers will allow us to strengthen our centers to generally care better for people living with this disease, which we haven’t been able to do before because the cost is a problem,” she said.

High cost brings a new payment model

As they figure out how to ramp up treatment capacity, state and federal officials are grappling with how to provide access to the costly new treatments for the thousands of patients covered by the Medicaid safety net program.
“It’s giving us an opportunity to respond to folks with medical conditions for which there have not been very satisfying treatments. But I think the immediate consideration is the cost is very high. And state budgets simply cannot manage that on their own,” said Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.
A University of Washington analysis found that at a price of $2 million or less, the one-time gene therapy treatments would provide an acceptable value, offsetting the lifetime medical and quality-of-life costs for acute sickle cell patients. Many who suffer from the disease require multiple hospitalizations and blood transfusions, which can leave them unable to work.
But the researchers concluded that a lower price closer to $1 million would help ensure greater access.
The Biden administration is launching negotiations in the coming weeks with Vertex and Bluebird Bio to obtain discounts for state Medicaid plans, with payments linked to patient health outcomes. It is part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Cell and Gene Therapy Access Model, which aims to make new high-priced treatments easier to obtain. Approval of the sickle cell treatments prompted the administration to begin implementing the new payment demonstration program one year early, starting in January 2025.
“There are probably about 100 therapies in the pipeline at the FDA in an advanced stage of application … so this is a real-time priority in terms of developing strategies that are going to undergird Medicaid programs capacity to cover the treatments,” said McEvoy.
The direct talks with the sickle cell drugmakers come as large pharmaceutical firms like Merck, Eli Lilly and others are suing the Biden administration over the Inflation Reduction Act Medicare price negotiations, which got underway in February. Those talks could see sharply lower price offers on the first 10 drugs selected for negotiation.
But on Vertex’s quarterly earnings call this month, executives expressed confidence about the negotiation process in this case. They said discussions with individual state Medicaid agencies will help ensure wide access and address long-standing inequities of care in the sickle cell disease community.
“We’re not waiting for the demo before we secure access for patients who are covered by Medicaid,” Steve Arbuckle, Vertex executive vice president and chief operating officer, told analysts. “If you look at the profile of Casgevy, it is so incredibly strong that really we’re talking about an outcomes-based agreement which is looking at whether a very, very small number of patients may not respond.”

Employers are taking note

Private employer health plans are also grappling with how to pay for an increasing number of novel treatments with seven-figure price tags, said Morgan Health CEO Dan Mendelson, whose firm focuses on workplace health programs.
“Many employers look at cell and gene therapies, see the costs, and are carving them out of their benefits. They know the therapies are valuable,” Mendelson said. But for smaller companies, “one case could exceed the cost of insuring an entire population in the course of a year and the employer doesn’t even know if the employee is going to stick around.”
Morgan Health is exploring new risk-sharing payment models that could help small- and medium-sized businesses cover the rising costs of specialty treatments coming onto the market.
Goodwin is covered under his wife’s employer health insurance. He hasn’t explored what kind of coverage her plan will provide for the new sickle cell treatments, because he’s still not sure whether they’re right for him.
“If they could guarantee me the outcome — that I wouldn’t have sickle cell … I would do it in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat,” he said.
In addition to discussions over payments, Vertex and Bluebird Bio are taking steps to educate doctors and patient communities about the benefits of their new treatments.
Vertex expects its first commercial patient to begin treatment in the coming weeks. Bluebird said it anticipated its first patient would start Lyfgenia in the first quarter. More

American, JetBlue and Alaska have all raised baggage fees this year.
Carriers have changed the price to check a bag depending on whether travelers pay for it in advance or at the airport.
Airlines and other companies have been grappling with how to grow profits while reining in costs, such as new labor contracts.

United Airlines planes at Denver International Airport.
Leslie Josephs | CNBC

United Airlines is raising the price to check bags, becoming the latest carrier this year to hike a fee that generated more than $5 billion for airlines in the first nine months of 2023 alone.
United economy passengers who book domestic tickets starting Feb. 24 will pay $40 for a first checked bag, or $35 if they prepay online at least 24 hours before their flight, an increase of $5. A second checked bag will cost $50 at the airport, or $45 in advance, up $5 for both options.

The changes apply to most flights throughout North America, a United spokeswoman said.
In 2020, United raised the price to check a bag at the airport by $5 to $35 but kept it steady at $30 if travelers paid for the service in advance.
Certain credit card holders, frequent flyers with elite status, active military and travelers in top-tier classes can still check a bag for free, United said.
Earlier this week, American Airlines raised its fee to check a first bag on domestic flights to $35 if purchased in advance and $40 at the airport. Both options were previously $30. A second checked bag will go up from $40 to $45.
Airlines and other companies have been grappling with how to grow profits while reining in costs, such as new labor contracts, while pricing power has waned.

JetBlue and Alaska Airlines have also raised bag fees this year.
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Carvana posted strong results and its first-ever annual profit in an earnings report Thursday.
Wall Street analysts upgraded the stock citing profit trends and a positive retail sales forecast.
Shares of the company surged 30% Friday.

Vehicles are seen on display at a Carvana dealership in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 20, 2023.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images

Carvana shares surged 30% Friday after posting its first-ever annual profit and receiving a pair of upgrades by Wall Street analysts.
The used-car retailer has been trimming inventory and expenses as it rebounds from the fall off from a pandemic peak. After the Covid-19 pandemic drove increased demand for online car sales, the company’s stock soared. But after that demand wore off, Carvana was forced to begin aggressive restructuring and cost cutting.

In its after-hours earnings report Thursday, the company posted its first annual profit with a net income of $450 million for 2023 compared with a loss of $1.59 billion in 2022.
CEO Ernie Garcia told CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Friday morning that the company is in an “incredible competitive position.”

The company is currently in step two of a three-step restructuring plan, which includes breaking even on an adjusted EBITDA basis, driving the business to significant positive unit economics and returning to growth.
Its total gross profit per unit more than doubled to $5,283, up from $2,219 in the year-ago period, according to the quarterly report.
The company noted in its earnings report that the macroeconomic car-selling environment remains uncertain, though it expects to grow retail units sold during the first quarter and for 2024.

Analysts at Raymond James upgraded their rating on the stock to market perform on Friday, highlighting the encouraging GPU trends. The analysts wrote that investor sentiment is “aligning more closely with the narrative of Carvana’s long-term market potential.”
The company’s stock surged last year and now trades for about $70 per share, still well off its pandemic high of $370 per share, notched in 2021. The stock lost nearly all of its value in 2022, prompting bankruptcy concerns that have since been abated by signs of recovery.
William Blair analysts also upgraded Carvana’s rating, to “outperform,” because of the profit increases and unit growth, noting that they believe the company is “now poised for a further breakout” with the encouraging 2024 forecast.
Garcia said on CNBC that Carvana, with its 1% market share, is still focused on its current inventory despite the past year’s growth and profit.
“I think we’ve got to see through what we’re currently working on,” Garcia said. “There’s no question that in the medium run, growing our inventory to give our customers even more selection is going to be a big part of our strategy. I think our goal is to be in a place where customers come to get the simplest experience, to get the best price and the best selection.”Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Warner Bros. Discovery missed analyst estimates for both revenue and earnings as advertising revenue slumped.
Streaming service Max ended 2023 profitable for the first time.
Studio revenue dropped 17% in part as a result of strikes by Hollywood writers and actors.

The exterior of the Warner Bros. Discovery Atlanta campus is pictured after the Writers Guild of America began their strike against the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. May 2, 2023.
Alyssa Pointer | Reuters

Warner Bros. Discovery missed analyst targets for both profit and revenue in the fourth quarter but boosted free cash flow as its streaming service Max ended 2023 profitable for the first time.
Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery fell about 1% in premarket trading Friday after the report.

Warner Bros. Discovery generated $3.31 billion in free cash flow in the fourth quarter and ended 2023 with $6.16 billion in free cash flow, up 86% from a year prior. Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav has prioritized boosting free cash flow and shrinking the company’s debt. Warner Bros. Discovery paid down $1.2 billion of debt in the quarter and $5.4 billion in debt in 2023. It still has $44.2 billion of gross debt remaining.
The company’s flagship subscription streaming service, Max, ended 2023 profitable, with full-year adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $103 million.
Zaslav has dramatically cut content spending for the streaming service since merging WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2022. His efforts have helped Max reach profitability before the streaming divisions of legacy media rivals Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Paramount Global.
The company reported 97.7 million global direct-to-consumer subscribers, a 2% increase from the previous quarter.
Here’s what the company reported for the quarter ended Dec. 31, versus analysts’ estimates, according to LSEG, formerly known as Refinitiv:

Loss per share: 16 cents vs. 7 cents expected
Revenue: $10.28 billion vs. $10.35 billion expected

President and Chief Executive Officer of Warner Bros. Discovery David Zaslav attends the world premiere of the 4k restorated 1959 movie “Rio Bravo” presented at the Opening Night of the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival in the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California, April 13, 2023.
Aude Guerrucci | AFP | Getty Images

The company’s fourth-quarter net loss was $400 million, or 16 cents per share, compared with a loss of $2.1 billion, or 86 cents per share, during the year-ago period.
Fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA was $2.5 billion, down 5% from a year ago, excluding the impact of foreign exchange, as studio revenue lagged as a result of strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Studio revenue dropped 17% to $3.17 billion in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the unit fell 29% to $543 million.
Warner Bros. Discovery reported a 14% decline in linear television advertising revenue excluding changes in foreign exchange and a 4% drop in actual distribution revenue.
Given the declines among cable TV subscriptions, Warner Bros. Discovery announced earlier this month it plans to begin a joint venture with Disney and Fox to offer a smaller, less expensive bundle of linear networks that focus on sports programming.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
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In a little over a month since hitting all-time lows, and as its IM-1 mission made its way to the lunar surface, shares of Intuitive Machines climbed more than 300% since early January.
It’s a rally that Wall Street analysts describe as fueled by retail investors’ excitement for the space company’s progress toward an unprecedented goal.
“We’ve never witnessed a publicly traded company go through [a moon landing attempt]. So this is new, not just for investors, but for us analysts as well,” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Andres Sheppard told CNBC.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander “Odysseus” deploys from the upper stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to begin the IM-1 mission.

Much like Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft, its stock has been flying to the moon the past week.
In a little over a month since hitting all-time lows, and as its IM-1 mission made its way to the lunar surface, shares of Intuitive Machines have more than tripled since early January. It’s a rally that Wall Street analysts describe as fueled by retail investors’ excitement for the space company’s progress toward an unprecedented goal.

The Texas-based lunar company’s stock, with the apt ticker of “LUNR,” now trades for about $8 per share as of Thursday’s close, a far cry from January lows of closer to $2. At one point this week, as IM-1 progressed through milestones ahead of its landing attempt — the stock reached over $13 in trading.
In the moments after the lander, named “Odysseus” after the figure in Greek mythology, successfully touched down on the moon’s surface, the stock surged once again.
“We’ve never witnessed a publicly traded company go through [a moon landing attempt]. So this is new, not just for investors, but for us analysts as well,” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Andres Sheppard told CNBC.
Sheppard compared Intuitive Machine’s landing to a biotech company waiting on a FDA approval for a new drug: “It’s a bit of a binary outcome,” Sheppard said.
While Sheppard expected Intuitive’s stock price to climb after a successful landing, potentially as high as $15 a share, he cautioned “that valuation is certainly ahead of the company’s financials” — as “people are getting caught up” in the excitement and history of IM-1 landing on the moon, he said.

Stock chart icon

Intuitive Machines stock trading around its IM-1 moon mission.

Intuitive went public via a SPAC merger less than a year ago, and has spent most of that time trading below its debut pricing. Only a handful of Wall Street analysts cover the $1 billion space company. Of the firms listed by FactSet as covering Intuitive Machines, all four analysts have buy equivalent ratings on the stock – and all four have seen the stock blow past their pre-launch price targets.

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Beyond the technological and financial progress IM-1 represents for Intuitive Machines, analysts pointed to the enthusiasm for the first U.S. landing on the moon in over 50 years, as well as the first by a corporate entity, rather than a government agency.
“We get to see how these applications in space can capture the imagination and vision of investors … hopefully it is successful, as I think that will do a lot for the space industry as a whole,” Benchmark analyst Josh Sullivan told CNBC prior to the lunar landing.
Along with Canaccord Genuity analyst Austin Moeller, Sullivan and Sheppard were unanimous in their reads that retail, not institutional, investors are driving the current Intuitive Machines’ rally. Sheppard said his firm estimates about 80% of trading over the past week was done by retail traders.
“There’s huge momentum being driven by the retail community behind this,” Sheppard said.
Sullivan also cited the global news coverage of Intuitive’s mission as another driver, giving the company a wider exposure.
“The successful milestones are adding up to a point where [a moon company] is becoming a commercial reality, and I think that’s starting to catch on,” Sullivan said.

Passing milestones

IM-1 made steady progress through the 16 milestones the company outlined before the launch. Yet Intuitive is not just clearing the technological hurdles that come with a first spaceflight, but also checking boxes to get paid by its biggest customer.

Intuitive Machines and NASA leaders showcase a mockup of the company’s Nova-C lunar lander during a presentation on May 31, 2019.
Aubrey Gemignani / NASA

The mission is under an $118 million contract with NASA, with necessary milestones for payment. But, as Sullivan noted, IM-1 represents more than just getting paid for an existing contract.
“It is really about proving a track record of success in the very harsh environment of space, so that in the future when they’re going to NASA … the likelihood of them winning those very large contracts increases pretty substantially,” Sullivan said.
A key element of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is the competitive nature between companies bidding to deliver cargo on future moon missions. One of Intuitive Machines’ competitors, Astrobotic, had a crippling problem during its inaugural moon mission last month that kept the company from attempting a landing.
Both companies, as well as others, have already won NASA contracts for additional missions. Analysts see Intuitive’s progress thus far as a key differentiator in future bids. More

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C cargo lander, named “Odysseus” after the mythological Greek hero, is the first U.S. spacecraft to soft land on the lunar surface since 1972.
Intuitive Machines is the first company to pull off a moon landing — government agencies have carried out all previously successful missions.
The company’s stock surged in extended trading Thursday, after falling 11% in regular trading.

The IM-1 lander “Odysseus” in lunar orbit on Feb. 21, 2024.
Intuitive Machines

A U.S. company has gone to the moon – and into the history books.
Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission reached the moon’s surface on Thursday evening, in the first American lunar landing since the Apollo era.

The company’s Nova-C cargo lander, named “Odysseus” after the mythological Greek hero, is the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the lunar surface since 1972. Adding to the feat, Intuitive Machines is the first company to pull off a moon landing — government agencies have carried out all previously successful missions.
“We are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon,” Intuitive Machines’ CEO Steve Altemus said from mission control.
There was a delay, as expected, between the landing and when engineers were able to assess its success.
A few minutes after the expected landing time, Intuitive Machines’ mission control was still trying to reconnect communications with the spacecraft to confirm whether it landed. The company’s mission control ultimately picked up a signal and announced its lander was on the surface.
“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is that our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting. So congratulations, IM-1,” Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ CTO and IM-1 mission director, said.

“Odysseus has found his new home,” Crain added.
The company’s stock surged in extended trading Thursday, after falling 11% in regular trading to close at $8.28 a share.
Intuitive Machines, a Houston, Texas-based company founded in 2013, went public a year ago. After shares hit an all-time low in early January, the stock has surged and more than tripled – a rally that Wall Street analysts describe as fueled by investor excitement around the IM-1 mission’s progress.

Odysseus’ journey

The lander began a series of maneuvers about one hour before touching down, starting with “Descent Orbit Insertion.

An illustration of the IM-1 mission, with milestones from launch to landing.
Intuitive Machines

IM-1 landed in the “Malapert A” crater, about 300 kilometers from the moon’s south pole. After landing, Intuitive Machines aims to operate Odysseus on the surface for up to seven days.
The mission launched on a SpaceX rocket on Feb. 15. It is carrying 12 government and commercial payloads — six of which are for NASA under an $118 million contract.

Intuitive Machines and NASA leaders showcase a mockup of the company’s Nova-C lunar lander during a presentation on May 31, 2019.
Aubrey Gemignani / NASA

The hexagonal lander is 4.3 meters (or about 14 feet) tall, and its legs spread 4.6 meters (or about 15 feet) wide, making the spacecraft about the size of an SUV stood on its end.

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NASA leadership emphasized before the launch that “IM-1 is an Intuitive Machines’ mission, it’s not a NASA mission.” IM-1 marks the second mission under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to deliver science projects and cargo to the moon with increasing regularity in support of the agency’s Artemis crew program.
“Today, for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon. Today, for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company and an American company launched and led the voyage up there,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said on the livestream

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander on display at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

Lunar geopolitics

IM-1 is also the latest move in a broader geopolitical race to the moon. While Intuitive Machines represents the latest American effort, other nations – both U.S. rivals and allies – are pouring money into lunar programs.
Last month, Japan became the fifth country to land on the moon, following Russia, the U.S., China and India.
Governments and private companies alike have made more than 50 attempts to land on the moon with mixed success since the first attempts in the early 1960s, and the track record has remained shaky even in this century. But that’s not deterring the modern moon race that’s now well underway.
NASA expects U.S. companies to launch additional missions this year, while China plans to launch its next lunar lander in May.  More