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    Moon company Intuitive Machines begins first mission after SpaceX launch

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    Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander launched from Florida on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, beginning the IM-1 mission.
    If fully successful, the IM-1 cargo mission would be the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years.
    The Intuitive Machines lander is expected to spend about eight days traveling to the moon before descending to the surface.

    A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Nova-C lander for the IM-1 mission launches from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 1:05 a.m. EDT on February 15, 2024 in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
    Paul Hennessy | Anadolu | Getty Images

    Texas-based Intuitive Machines’ inaugural moon mission began early Thursday morning, heading toward what could be the first U.S. lunar landing in more than 50 years.
    Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander launched from Florida on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, beginning the IM-1 mission.

    “It is a profoundly humbling moment for all of us at Intuitive Machines. The opportunity to return the United States to the moon for the first time since 1972 is a feat of engineering that demands a hunger to explore,” Intuitive Machines vice president of space systems Trent Martin said during a press conference.

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

    The IM-1 lander, named “Odysseus” after the mythological Greek hero, is carrying 12 government and commercial payloads — six of which are for NASA under an $118 million contract.

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    NASA leadership emphasized before the launch that “IM-1 is an Intuitive Machines’ mission, it’s not a NASA mission.” But it 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.
    The agency views CLPS missions as “a learning experience,” NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration in the science mission directorate, Joel Kearns, told press before the launch.
    “Success of every landing is never assured,” Kearns said. “NASA is using CLPS to get our science investigations and technologies tests done on the moon surface and to develop a commercial community of robotic landing service providers for Artemis.”

    Intuitive Machines outlined 16 milestones it hopes to achieve with IM-1, with landing successfully representing the final step. So far, the company confirmed IM-1 has achieved two of those milestones — launch and separation from the rocket.
    The IM-1 lander is expected to spend about eight days traveling to the moon before descending to the surface on Feb. 22. The mission is targeting 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.
    Intuitive Machines’ stock has doubled since the beginning of the year, but at $4.98 a share at Wednesday’s close, it’s about half of the price it was when the company’s stock debuted in February 2023 on the Nasdaq after a SPAC merger.

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

    Last month, Japan became the fifth country to land on the moon, following Russia — then the Soviet Union — 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 the modern era. 
    Last year, Japanese company ispace made its first attempt to land on the moon, but the spacecraft crashed in the final moments. Last month, U.S. company Astrobotic got its first moon mission off the ground but encountered problems shortly after launch. The flight was cut short and failed to make a lunar landing attempt.
    Even though Astrobotic’s recent attempt didn’t succeed, Kearns said that NASA was “really happy with how open and transparent” the company was about the mission and its learnings from it.
    “[Astrobotic] did a virtual meeting with all the other CLPS companies, to brief the other CLPS companies about what they found,” Kearns said.
    More attempts are on the way. NASA expects U.S. companies to launch additional missions this year, while China plans to launch another lunar lander in May.  More

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    Pay TV distributors may be planning their attack against new sports joint venture

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    The key question for pay TV distributors such as Comcast, Charter and DirecTV is whether they’ll be able to offer customers the same skinny sports bundle as the joint venture recently announced by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox.
    Privately, leaders at the latter three companies have begun to hear complaints from some distributors, who are concerned the new bundle will lead to increased cable TV cancellations.
    Early conversations haven’t been particularly substantial because limited information has been disclosed about the joint venture’s strategy.

    A Major League Baseball logo at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, May 22, 2022.
    Ronald Martinez | Getty Images

    It’s been about a week since Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox announced a new joint venture to offer live sports outside the traditional cable bundle, and pay TV distributors are still trying to figure out just how disruptive the new service will be.
    The key question for distributors such as Comcast, Charter and DirecTV is whether they’ll be allowed to offer the same skinny bundle of linear networks that Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox announced will be available to consumers later this fall. That bundle includes ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, TBS, Fox, FS1, FS2, and a handful of other cable channels that showcase sports.

    If Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox allow distributors to offer the same product, in addition to the standard cable bundle, there’s likely to be minimal consternation about the joint venture. But it’s not clear that will be the case, given that may defeat the purpose of its existence.
    In 2023, Charter began offering a package of cable networks that didn’t include sports to lower the cost of cable TV for customers who only wanted news and entertainment. Offering sports to only those people who want to watch sports is good for distributors, but it’s harmful to programmers, who benefit from the millions of households that pay for sports but don’t watch them.
    That’s why, logically, the new sports joint venture only makes sense if the three media companies bar distributors from offering the same product.
    So far, the largest pay TV distributors haven’t spoken publicly about the forthcoming bundle because they’re still gathering information on the joint venture’s plans, according to people familiar with their thinking, who asked not to be named because the discussions have been private.
    Privately, however, leaders at Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox have begun to hear complaints from some distributors, who are concerned the new skinny bundle will lead to increased cable TV cancellations, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Terms of agreement

    Pay TV distributors typically strike most-favored-nation deals with programmers that allow contracts to be replicated among like partners. It guarantees that a company such as Disney can strike a deal with DirecTV that’s similar to its deal with, say, Dish.
    If the sports joint venture refuses to allow distributors the same terms as it’s offering retail customers, distributors could either refuse to carry their networks when carriage renewal deals are up or even sue, according to Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson.
    “The distributors have been begging for the right to offer cheaper and skinnier bundles, especially bundles that would segregate expensive sports from cheaper non-sports programming, for at least two decades, and they’ve been met with a brick wall,” Moffett said. “At the very least, this would seem to violate the most favored nation clauses that prohibit the programmers from offering better terms and conditions to another distributor, even if that distributor is a JV [joint venture] of the programmers themselves. I would be surprised if there aren’t some lawsuits.”
    Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox all rely on the pay-TV distributors for the bulk of their revenue.
    And while some stand to indirectly benefit from the potential popularity of the joint venture — Charter and Comcast, for example, could see a boost to their broadband businesses, since the digital app would require high-speed internet service for best performance — others, such as DirecTV, Dish and YouTube TV stand more directly in the crosshairs and could lose video subscribers.
    Still, early conversations between distributor executives and leaders at Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox haven’t been particularly substantial, because limited information has been disclosed about the strategy of the joint venture, which hasn’t been formally named or even legally agreed upon by the companies.
    “The formation of the pay service is subject to the negotiation of definitive agreements amongst the parties,” Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox said in a statement last week.
    No leader for the joint venture has been named yet, although one has tentatively been selected, according to people familiar with the matter. Puck reported Tuesday the front-runner is former Apple executive Pete Distad.
    Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.
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