Intuitive Machines Seen as Better Bet Than SpaceX for Trillion-Dollar Space Economy

Firefly Aerospace Inc. was awarded a Spacecraft Processing Operations Contract from NASA on August 17, a multiple-award contract that also includes All Points Logistics, Blue Origin, and L3Harris Technologies and carries a total ceiling value of $100 million with an ordering period extending through February 2033. The contract positions Firefly to compete for task orders providing payload processing facilities and services for NASA missions launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base. "Reliable access to space depends on more than rockets — it depends on the infrastructure that gets payloads ready to fly," said Adam Oakes, Vice President of Launch at Firefly Aerospace. Two days later, on August 19, Firefly announced it is onboarding Zeno Power to its upcoming Blue Ghost lunar mission to demonstrate radioisotope technologies designed to survive the lunar night. On September 9, Firefly signed a multi-launch agreement with SSC Space for two Alpha rocket launches from Sweden's Esrange Space Center.

IBM and NASA have made a new artificial-intelligence model publicly available to help researchers analyze lunar data. The NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation Model was trained on a broad dataset assembled by researchers from both organizations and is designed to extract useful findings from complex scientific records gathered by different instruments. The open-source release is intended to support research tied to future lunar missions and scientific exploration, and could contribute to longer-term efforts involving continued human activity on the Moon. IBM shares fell about 1.5% Thursday as the model moved into open-source use.