Intuitive Machines wins NASA FALCON-RADAR spacecraft contract

Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR) has been selected by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to provide the spacecraft platform and system-level integration for FALCON-RADAR, an Earth observation mission targeting a launch no earlier than 2029, according to a company statement.

The mission will fly on Intuitive Machines' IM 300 spacecraft bus and will carry a W-Band Cloud Profiling Doppler Radar instrument designed to observe shallow light precipitation and small-scale cloud dynamics from a polar-orbiting, sun-synchronous orbit. FALCON-RADAR is part of NASA's Fleet for the Atmospheric Linking Commercial Observations with NASA program.

The spacecraft is being developed alongside EAGLE-VSWIR, a separate NASA mission also awarded to Intuitive Machines. The two missions are intended to provide complementary science data.

The FALCON-RADAR contract is the third NASA Earth science mission awarded to Intuitive Machines within six months. The company is also working on the EAGLE-VSWIR mission and NASA's EDGE (Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer) mission, the latter 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. The EDGE mission will use an IM 500 spacecraft bus.

"Our reliable and modular platforms align with NASA's goal of delivering more science on faster timelines," said Steve Altemus, Chief Executive Officer of Intuitive Machines. "We combine spacecraft manufacturing at scale with deep mission systems and integration expertise, and Earth science is a natural fit."

Financial terms of the FALCON-RADAR award were not disclosed in the announcement.

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