Intuitive Machines' Intuitive Moon Landing Aircraft Overturned After Successful Landing, Shares Drop 30%

Shares of the lunar lander company, Intuitive Machines, have fallen 30% in post-hour trading.

JAKARTA - Shares of the lunar lander company, Intuitive Machines, have fallen 30% in post-hour trading. This removed the rally on Friday, February 23, after the company announced its aircraft had rolled down moments after touching the surface of the moon one day earlier.

The first private company to land on the moon, up nearly double from 4.98 US dollars before its February 15 launch to 9.59 US dollars at Friday's close. But Sales suddenly fell at the end of Friday leaving shares under 7 US dollars.

However, the company said the Odyssey aircraft was "living and healthy" and engineers were sending orders to vehicles, and NASA officials at a press conference praised the effort.

The first lunar landing by US aircraft in more than half a century raised investor enthusiasm from other space startup companies, prompting company stocks such as Astra Space and Satelllogic to fall between 0.5% to 2.8% in post-hour trading.

Stephen Rotemus, Houston-based CEO of Intuitive Machines, who built and flew the lander, said their vehicle was believed to have caught one in six feet on the lunar surface during its last drop and rolled over. But able to stop by his side supported by a rock.

He said the team was working to get a picture of the first photo from the lunar surface at the landing site.

The company's executive said all active lander payloads - all charges except one, a work of art - face up and are expected to perform their scientific tasks.

Andres Sheppard, senior analyst at Cantor totaling, who is investment banking partner for Intuitive Machines, before news about the ouster's ouster had described the landing as a major achievement that should raise awareness and credibility for the entire space industry and new companies.

Enthusiasm on Friday pushed Intuitive Machines' stock market value close to $1 billion.

However, only 18% of the company's shares are available for trading in the stock market, where most of the Intuitive Machines' shares are owned by insiders and large investors, according to LSEG data. That makes more than $850 million in shares of the company traded on Friday a major turnover for one session.

The lunar lander from the Texas-based company touched the ground in the Malapert A crater, about 300 km (190 miles) from the south pole of the moon on Thursday, February 22.

The lander was sent to last Thursday using SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The company, founded in 2013 by space industry investor Kam Ghaffarian series and former NASA Altamus and Team Crain, is still waiting for the first image from the lunar surface.

The landing could open the door to investment and government contracts, helping space companies get through the difficult times of funding due to uncertain economics.

The landing represented the first controlled drop to the lunar surface by US aircraft since Apollo 17 in 1972, when NASA's last manned mission docked on the moon with astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

According to the CEO of Atemus, Intuitive Machines spent about 100 million US dollars (Rp 1.5 trillion) to develop an Odyssey lander. "We have to build an entire lunar program, not just a lander," he said.

The development of the company's lander also has USD 118 million in NASA under the agency's Commercial Moon Loading Service (CLPS) program, an attempt to encourage the development of a private lunar lander that can deliver payloads at a lower cost than the traditional US space agency method that builds and launches the lunar vehicle itself.

"We think we can meet all the needs of commercial cargo," Rotemus said at a press conference on Friday.

Astrobotics owned personally made the first month of fire under the CLPS program last month but propulsion leaks destroyed the mission. Texas-based Firefly Space, backed by private capital firm AE Industrial Partners, is expected to send their Blue Ghost lander to the moon this year.

Ghaffarian, who is also co-founder of Axiom Space, sits on the board of other space organizations and has served in various technical and managerial positions at Lockheed Martin, Ford Aerospace, and Loral.

The CEO of Rotemus joined NASA's Kennedy Space Center and a shuttle program in 1989, where he served several positions working on launch and landing activities.