Intuitive Machines Inc. LUNR
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Stifel upgrades to Buy despite earnings miss, citing backlog growth and reiterated guidance.
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Firefly Wins $100 Million NASA Contract, Adds Lunar and Launch Deals
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.
Rapidus Eyes Building a Chip Plant on the Moon by 2040
Atsuyoshi Koike, chairman and CEO of Japanese chipmaker Rapidus Corp, said on Thursday, September 10, that he is seriously considering building a semiconductor manufacturing plant on the Moon by 2040, citing the Moon's water resources as necessary for chip production. Speaking at a forum in Washington hosted by the Hudson Institute, Koike confirmed this is no joke and that he is thinking of a timeframe around 2040, and he showed attendees an AI-generated video depicting a simulated manufacturing plant on the lunar surface. Meanwhile, Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM Corp, who also attended the event, said IBM is providing technical support to Rapidus as the Japanese company prepares to mass-produce 2-nanometer semiconductors at its plant in Hokkaido, and the two companies are also jointly researching and developing even more advanced 1-nanometer semiconductors.
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IBM and NASA Release Open-Source AI Model for Lunar Research
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.