Steve Artemus is optimistic. And as the CEO of Intuitive Machines, which made history by becoming the first private company to successfully land on the moon, he has good reason. But that was just the beginning of his company’s plan to build “the full stack: all the parts needed to fly a mission to the Moon, on the Moon, and around the Moon.”
In an interview with TechCrunch, Altemus explained that Intuitive Machines is uniquely positioned to support lunar exploration missions and ultimately the lunar economy, not just as a NASA or Department of Defense contractor, but as a full-fledged commercial space services company.
Intuitive Machines recently became the sole beneficiary of a multibillion-dollar dollar telecommunications services contract. In other words, it will be the company that provides high-bandwidth communications for Artemis and all other missions associated with it.
“This is a huge deal,” Altemus said. “Now we have a third leg to support the company.”
“We have a contract for CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Service), which is a delivery service. And then there is the LTV (Lunar Terrain Vehicle) contract, which is Infrastructure as a Service. The middle part is data transmission and analysis, including commercial lunar data for Artemis. “If you think about it, now we have a platform for a lunar economy,” he continued. “And we can do that as a commercial provider of those services.”
The alternatives have historically been “sophisticated” systems, which have been prohibitively expensive one-off missions like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It’s technically amazing, but it costs nine figures. More and more government customers, civilians, and the military are choosing more economical means to accomplish the same tasks. Perhaps the best example is the use of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon capsules to transport astronauts to the ISS. This was once a much more difficult and expensive task.
Interestingly, Altemus has admitted to miscommunication about the current scope of its technology stack.
“When NASA first gave us the CLPS award, we were mistaken. “We thought they were saying that if you fly to the moon and give us back the data, you can’t use the Deep Space Network,” he said. It turns out they are was We could have used a DSN, but we worked under its constraints anyway. “Starting in 2019, we had to build a network that could communicate from Earth to the Moon to the lander. So, out of necessity, we had to identify those capabilities and go into communications and navigation to overcome regulatory hurdles.”
As a result, the company ended up with a much more powerful solution than it absolutely needed, but it also put it in a prime position for lunar communications contracts. In fact, the company easily won as the sole supplier.
Many might think that SpaceX, with its massive constellation of Starlink satellites, is well-suited to providing space communications services. However, despite the superficial similarity (transmission of radio signals from space), the problems to be solved are very different.
“When you think about lunar communications, this is a fundamentally different physics problem,” Altemus explained. “You have to understand the environment, you have to understand the distance and the situation. We used a suite of commercial ground stations from several countries and 12 radio astronomy-sized dishes to conduct operations on the way to the Moon, in orbit around the Moon, and on the Moon’s surface. And if you think about building a lunar lander, that’s a more complex machine than a satellite orbiting the moon, so the talent is already at home.”
The Lunar Communications contract is Intuitive Machines’ latest and most important contract, but the new Moon Buggy, the Lunar Terrain Vehicle, is certainly the easiest contract for the average person to appreciate. The company is working with AVL, Boeing, Michelin and Northrop Grumman as one team and competing with teams led by Lunar Outpost and Astrolab. The contract is just compose Although it is a new lunar rover, it will be operational and supported for 10 years. As Altemus points out, this is about more than just rover design work.
“If you think about it, this is the first commercial infrastructure on the lunar surface that has to operate autonomously. You can be fascinated by buggies, but you still have to provide service,” he said. “As a company, IM is the only company with a lander to deliver LTV, the LTV itself as a vehicle, and a communications and navigation system that operates autonomously on the Moon. The company is very well prepared for this.”
But that’s not to say that building a lunar rover isn’t interesting in itself, he hastened to add.
“All three companies are building Earth-based models to perform suitability checks and evaluations for human astronauts – how the designs will help with takeoff and landing, equipment removal and replacement, and how they operate and drive,” Altemus said. “It’s fun. We just had astronauts do a test and two of them actually walked on the moon. Hearing how the Moon Buggy worked, what it felt like, what the dirt felt like… it was really interesting.”
Intuitive Machines is not on its way to new glory days. Traditional procurement methods that combine costs and rewards are giving way to fixed-price contracts with built-in long-tail services and support. “Can (Prime) operate in that environment? The key to American competitiveness is that we move faster. The secret to success for companies like IM is speed and agility. Traditional aerospace companies, on the other hand, find it difficult to adapt.”
With 400 employees and growing, Intuitive Machines is still relatively small but is hiring quickly. Altemus said it’s based in Houston for a reason. “One of the key decisions I made when I left NASA and walked out the door at Johnson Space Center was that this was a fantastic place to start a company. Human Space Flight Center. The talent pool in this field is incredible. We are hiring all over the country, and this place is attractive. They can see the culture and energy of the company and get a feel for what it’s like to win.”
