Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) stock soared 60% in the first five minutes of trading Wednesday morning (up 60.4% through 9:35 a.m. ET) after NASA announced it is awarding a massive $4.8 billion moon contract to the rising space star.
The contract, dubbed "GEO to Cislunar Relay Services" covers communication services to the moon from the period of Oct. 1, 2024 through Sept. 30, 2029, and has the "option" of being extended by a further five years, through Sept. 30, 2034.
NASA + LUNR = better together
Specifically, NASA is hiring Intuitive Machines to provide communication services including "position, navigation, and timing capabilities, which are crucial for ensuring the safety of navigation on and around the lunar surface." The company will establish relays for communications between geostationary orbit (GEO, about 22,000 miles above Earth's surface) and the moon, which orbits Earth at a distance roughly 10 times that.
So basically, Intuitive will be in charge of making sure that messages sent from Earth to GEO satellites get the rest of the way to the moon, and vice versa. In its contract announcement, NASA notes that hiring the space company to handle this work will lighten the communications load on NASA's own Deep Space Network.
Is Intuitive Machines stock a buy?
And here's why this is important to investors: This contract isn't just a (much) bigger contract than the kind Intuitive Machines has been winning from NASA so far. It's an entirely new kind of work that NASA is hiring Intuitive to do.
Up until now, the space agency has hired Intuitive to land payloads on the moon for it. That's great work to have, and so far, Intuitive Machines is the only private company that's proven it's able to do it. Now the company is growing into a new field of business -- space communications -- and it looks very much like it could be a billion-dollar-a-year business for Intuitive Machines.
This is a clear-cut win for Intuitive Machines stock, and investors are right to be happy about it.
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Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
