Manifest Space: Intuitive Machines CEO on $800 Million Deal and Building a Lunar Communications Network 11/7/25

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spk_0 Intuitive machines announced to this week it will acquire satellite manufacturer, Lanteris

spk_0 Space Systems for $800 million in cash and stock.

spk_0 Lanteris, formerly known as MaxR Space Systems, is owned by Advent International.

spk_0 And the deal makes the PE firm a significant shareholder of publicly traded intuitive machines.

spk_0 Intuitive machines may best be known for its commercial landers that it's sent to the

spk_0 moon for NASA.

spk_0 But CEO Steve Altamus says Lanteris' scalable production of satellites that are highly

spk_0 reliable will quote feed the markets the company's going after.

spk_0 There's a whole series of layered networks that we plan to put in place in space from Leo to

spk_0 Mio to Geo to the moon and out to Mars.

spk_0 And then use that service for any of the other kind of observation satellites or specialty

spk_0 sensors that we need for space domain awareness or for any of the national security space

spk_0 needs that might arise here in the near future.

spk_0 So the key to the whole thing about opening up the space economy is about the communications

spk_0 and navigation.

spk_0 And if you can do that, you can place a spacecraft anywhere and communicate with it, bring the

spk_0 data back to Earth.

spk_0 And so the opportunities are nearly limitless for us once the networks in place.

spk_0 And Lanteris helps us with that, putting reliable satellites in places that we need to go.

spk_0 Intuitive machines recently won a $4.8 billion NASA contract to begin building out part

spk_0 of this commercial network.

spk_0 Like other contractors, the companies also navigating the government shutdown with the main impact

spk_0 the delay in new rewards since those contracts can't be doled out until the government reopens.

spk_0 As for the stock, after its own trip to the moon, shares of lunar have come back to Earth,

spk_0 falling some 22% this week and giving up post-election gains to now be slightly down over

spk_0 the past 12 months.

spk_0 On this episode Intuitive Machines Steve Ultimus on the deal to buy Lanteris and what its

spk_0 signals about where the space economy is heading.

spk_0 I'm Morgan Brennan and this is Manifest Space.

spk_0 Joining me now Steve Ultimus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines and Steve, it's always great to

spk_0 speak with you.

spk_0 Welcome.

spk_0 Thank you, Morgan.

spk_0 It's great to see you again and talk with you.

spk_0 Thanks for having me on.

spk_0 All right.

spk_0 So you just had a big week.

spk_0 You announced an acquisition.

spk_0 Let's talk about it.

spk_0 Yes.

spk_0 I think it's a transformative acquisition of Lanteris space systems, which is formerly

spk_0 Max R Space Systems Intuitive Machines, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Lanteris

spk_0 for $800, approximately $800 million in a mix of cash and equity.

spk_0 And so we'll have an advent with us, the owners, as a shareholder, sizeable shareholder

spk_0 of Intuitive Machines going forward, which is a great endorsement of the upside and

spk_0 potential of this deal.

spk_0 And so Lanteris is Max R Space, but when it was taken private by advent, it was then split

spk_0 in part into two businesses.

spk_0 And then just recently those businesses were renamed rebranded.

spk_0 Lanteris being one of them.

spk_0 So we're talking about hardware, right?

spk_0 What does this bring to the portfolio for Intuitive Machines?

spk_0 Such an incredible, scalable production capability that we will use at Intuitive Machines to feed

spk_0 our markets.

spk_0 The growth that we're experiencing in our markets, and I'll talk about that shortly

spk_0 here, to use their production and scalable satellite production lines, really does feed

spk_0 the markets we're going after.

spk_0 And they have this incredible reliability record for on-order orbit availability of their

spk_0 satellites, 99.99% uptime on the satellites is just class leading performance.

spk_0 So we take that scale and that reliability or availability, and we put it into our markets

spk_0 mainly the near-space network.

spk_0 You know, we won recently the near-space network services contract with NASA, and that's

spk_0 a $4.8 billion contract, and it's communicating from the ground all the way out to 2 million

spk_0 kilometers, and we're the commercial network to provide that service for the U.S. government.

spk_0 So that requires a constellation of data relay satellites around the moon and position

spk_0 navigation and timing services within that constellation.

spk_0 So I'm going to outfit satellites around the moon from the Lanteris portfolio of satellites

spk_0 eventually.

spk_0 Very cool. And of course, when I think of intuitive machines, I think about lunar landers,

spk_0 I think about lunar infrastructure.

spk_0 You just talked about the fact that you're seeing growth across the portfolio.

spk_0 Let's dig into that a little bit.

spk_0 Oh, yes, we started with the hard things, right?

spk_0 So landing on the south pole of the moon, and also putting a daily relay satellites around

spk_0 the moon and then a ground segment.

spk_0 Once we have the communications network and the ability to deploy with precision spacecraft

spk_0 in the vicinity of the moon, we can actually move down towards geosynchronous orbit and low

spk_0 Earth orbit and proliferated low Earth orbit and put constellations of satellites all

spk_0 the way out from that low Earth orbit all the way out to the moon.

spk_0 And then essentially turn our attention to Mars data relay satellites.

spk_0 So there's a whole series of layered networks that we plan to put in place in space from Leo to

spk_0 Mio to Geo to the moon and out to Mars and then use that service for any of the other kind

spk_0 of observation satellites or specialty sensors that we need for space domain awareness or

spk_0 for any of the national security space needs that might arise here in the near future.

spk_0 So the key to the whole thing about opening up the space economy is about the communications

spk_0 and navigation.

spk_0 And if you can do that, you can place spacecraft anywhere and communicate with it, bring the

spk_0 data back to Earth and so the opportunities are nearly limitless for us once the networks

spk_0 in place.

spk_0 And Lanteras helps us with that, putting reliable satellites in places that we need to go

spk_0 to.

spk_0 So in light of that, how quickly, I guess via Lanteras, it sounds like can you start

spk_0 to actually launch and deploy these constellation of satellites?

spk_0 Well already before this acquisition, we were working on, if you recall, during the

spk_0 quarter to earnings I brought manufacturing of the lunar satellites in house and began

spk_0 building the first three satellites.

spk_0 Those three satellites, the first one will go in the second half of 2026.

spk_0 The next two will go in the second half of 2027.

spk_0 Those are in two to machine satellites and then for satellites four and five, I anticipate

spk_0 that they're going to need to be much more capable.

spk_0 The customers indicating there are a lot of interested parties that want to put specialty

spk_0 payloads on those birds around the moon.

spk_0 So I think we're going to leverage Lanteras' capability to produce the larger satellites

spk_0 that will go into the constellation for satellites four and five around the moon.

spk_0 So now you work with NASA to do this.

spk_0 But is it a situation where you basically own the hardware, operate the constellations

spk_0 and then offer those constellations as a service?

spk_0 Is that had a thing about that for the future, especially if there's other applications

spk_0 above and beyond NASA to national security and other things?

spk_0 Yeah, so that's exactly right.

spk_0 The idea here is that we take and are not just a satellite provider.

spk_0 We're a provider of the communications and navigation service.

spk_0 So commercially, we own the entire network from the ground segment around the world

spk_0 to the data relay constellation around the moon.

spk_0 And that model will proliferate throughout the layers of space that I discussed.

spk_0 But we'll own all the assets and all the hardware and then we'll sell in much higher margins,

spk_0 we'll sell the time on the network in terms of, you know, minutes, right, data minutes.

spk_0 So think of us like a Verizon from the moon all the way back to Earth and from Earth all the way out to 2 million kilometers.

spk_0 So that service is really what we bring to the table as opposed to just a product developer.

spk_0 So how does that compare?

spk_0 I guess longer term when you think about the business and what's driving revenue,

spk_0 what's driving growth?

spk_0 I mean, this seems like a huge opportunity.

spk_0 Maybe near term, it's landers, it's rovers, but longer term is it the network and then selling the services?

spk_0 Well, the business, yes, is in some sense the business is delivery services to land things on the surface of the moon

spk_0 or put things in orbits in and around the moon or out in the deep space.

spk_0 The second pillar of the business is really where the expansion is occurring right now and that is in the data services.

spk_0 So that's the networks and the navigation and the ability to move those networks to different regions of space down into geosynchronous orbit and down into medium Earth orbit and low Earth orbit.

spk_0 And then the third pillar of the business is infrastructure as a service.

spk_0 And if you recall, we put in a proposal for the demonstration of the lunar terrain vehicle service contract to deliver the LTV or the moon bug either rover to the surface of the moon and operate it autonomously.

spk_0 So that takes delivery service to get it there development of the infrastructure, the LTV itself and it takes the network and the data flow back and forth to operate it autonomously.

spk_0 So we have all three pieces into the company and then we'll apply that to that LTV contract, which we expect an award as early as next week.

spk_0 Oh, interesting.

spk_0 Okay.

spk_0 I do want to talk about the lunar lander specifically because you've now sent two landers to the moon over the last couple of years.

spk_0 Neither mission went quite according to plan.

spk_0 And so I do want to get your thoughts on that.

spk_0 What you've learned from both of those missions and how it sets you up for the next ones.

spk_0 Oh, yes.

spk_0 We landed twice on the south pole of the moon and we had the landers on their side at the end of the mission.

spk_0 And that's not the desirable point.

spk_0 You want to land with softly with precision.

spk_0 And so we had identified the root cause of the problem is in a laser rangefinder.

spk_0 That gives you the distance to the surface of the moon.

spk_0 We've subsequently re-architected the precision landing and hazard avoidance software and sensors so that we can land softly and land with precision.

spk_0 And we are in the middle of testing those sensors in helicopter flights where you fly the sensors and you and you fire the lasers, you get a reflection back and you feed it into the software and the algorithms to see if it works.

spk_0 Then also we run long distance thermal vacuum chamber with the sensors to show that they're going to operate in the vacuum of space at temperature.

spk_0 So that test is coming up shortly.

spk_0 And we're set for launch on IAM 3 with all the corrections that we put in place from IAM 2 for the latter half of 2026.

spk_0 And what will happen is on that mission, we move that mission slightly out in the calendar year to to marry up the data relay satellite for the moon, which will go on the same ride, space X ride with the lander and head out towards the moon.

spk_0 So I get a bang for the buck where I can deploy a satellite and a lander to the moon in that mission three.

spk_0 Right now currently we're experiencing here in the US the longest ever government shutdown. How are you navigating it?

spk_0 Well, yes, that's quite inconvenient for a lot of people. We've been given authorization to continue all of our contracts.

spk_0 And so we've been running normal business operations on all of our government contracts, making progress, working on our lunar landers, working on our satellites, working on our ground systems.

spk_0 But the new awards, you know, the pipeline of new awards, there's another clips or commercial lunar payload service award pending. That's called CT4.

spk_0 We're waiting for that. And that's affected by the government shutdown.

spk_0 The LTV S the lunar train vehicle services contract. It's waiting for the government shutdown and it's that's caused some confusion because you know you can't obligate funds to new contracts without a continuing resolution.

spk_0 So we're waiting for those awards and everyone in the market is anticipating when the government's going to open and when the floodgates of new awards are going to go out into the industry. And so that's the biggest impact we see.

spk_0 And we did just get a new nominee to run NASA, Jared Isaacman, who had been nominated earlier and then has nomination pulled. He's now back in the mix. But you could say arguably we have had a NASA that has not had a full fledged fully confirmed leader for the better part of a year.

spk_0 Has that affected space exploration policy? And if so, what has that meant in terms of navigating that intuitive machines?

spk_0 Well, it certainly has affected how the agencies needs to move forward. You know, we're in a geopolitical space race with China.

spk_0 And it's important that we're making progress towards putting humans on the moon and the biggest change is in the Artemis program and how we can continue momentum to get humans to the moon.

spk_0 You know, what's been good for intuitive machines is the clips program, the precursor missions to humans on the moon. We've been continuing.

spk_0 And so we've been making progress even though there hasn't been a full time administrator in the agency.

spk_0 But those budgets need to be reconciled. You know, those programs need to be ironed out. You'll see, you know, what are we going to do as an agency with the hardware that has been built, the SLS space launch system, the Orion space capsule.

spk_0 What are those missions going to fly? What is the re-architecting of the human lunar program look like? Those are the big questions that I'm hoping the new administrator, Jared Isaacman can roll up his sleeves and get his arms around.

spk_0 There are tough issues that need to be negotiated with Congress also. And so I'm happy to see that we're going to get a leader and move those things forward.

spk_0 And intuitive machines is here to help in any way we can. But the programs that we currently have, we're working on in earnest.

spk_0 So it's just good to see, you know, that the performing orgs get a leader and can start executing on the contracts and the reformulation of Artemis.

spk_0 All right, Steve Altamus of intuitive machines. It's always great to speak with you. Thank you so much.

spk_0 Thank you, Morgan. Thanks for having me today.

spk_0 That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts. And by watching our coverage, I'm closing bell over time.

spk_0 I'm Morgan Brennan.

Manifest Space: Intuitive Machines CEO on $800 Million Deal and Building a Lunar Communications Network 11/7/25

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