Space SPAC Index – Intuitive Machines Sets Window for Moon Launch

Welcome to S-SPACⁱ! In this week’s edition, Intuitive Machines set a launch window for its first lunar landing mission, AST SpaceMobile raised money to fund its first five satellites, Terran Orbital reported higher second-quarter revenue, and Virgin Galactic flew tourists for the first time. Plus we’ve got second-quarter results for Astra and Momentus and the latest about Planet Labs and Rocket Labs.

Intuitive Machines sets launch window

Intuitive Machines announced plans to launch its IM-1 mission to the Moon later this year during a launch window from November 15-20. The Nova-C lander will carry 11 payloads for NASA and private organizations to the Malapert A crater in the South polar region of the moon. The space agency is funding the mission under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Intuitive Machines reported second-quarter revenue of $18 million, down from $19.2 million during the same period in 2022. Revenue for the first six months was $36.2 million, a decline from $37.7 million in the first half of last year.

Intuitive Machines had a second-quarter operating loss of $13.2 million, up from a $2.2 million operating loss during the same quarter last year. The company had a cash balance of $39.1 million and a contracted backlog of orders worth $137.3 million on June 30, 2023.

AST SpaceMobile funds first satellites

AST SpaceMobile (Nasdaq: ASTS) reported this week that the first five BlueBird satellites are fully funded and set to launch in the first quarter of 2024. The company reached the milestone after raising up to $179 million in additional funding over the past several months. AST SpaceMobile plans to deploy 243 satellites to provide communications services to cellular phones.

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Space SPAC Index
August 16, 2023

Terran Orbital earnings increase

Terran Orbital (NYSE: LLAP) reported that second-quarter revenue increased 51 percent to $32.2 million over the same period in 2022. The company said the $2.4 billion, 300-satellite constellation it is building for Rivada Space Networks is on schedule, and that the customer is current on all payments.

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Virgin Galactic flies tourists

Virgin Galactic flew its first tourists on August 10. SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity carried 80-year-old former Olympia Jon Goodwin and the mother-daughter duo of Keisha Schahaff and Anastatia Mayers on a suborbital flight that reached an altitude of 88.5 km (55.0 miles) from Spaceport America in New Mexico.

It was the company’s second commercial flight after it flew three Italian researchers on June 29. The inaugural tourism flight came nearly 19 years after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson announced plans to fly people on suborbital flights in September 2004.

The company is planning a third commercial flight next month.

Astra: It’s all in the pivot

Astra Space (Nasdaq: ASTR) reported revenue of $707,000 for the second quarter only weeks after revealing it had laid off a quarter of its employees and had pivoted away from its launch business to manufacturing satellite propulsion systems.

The $707,000 was also Astra’s revenue for the first half of 2023. (The company had no revenue in the first quarter.) Last year, Astra’s revenues were $2 million in the first quarter and $5.9 during the first six months.

Astra reported a GAAP gross profit of $300,000 and a GAAP net loss of $14 million. The company had cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaling $26.3 million at the end of the quarter on June 30, 2023.

Astra is looking to raise $65 million through the sale of stock. The company is a reverse stock split in which 15 shares of stock will be exchanged for one new share. The move is designed to raise the company’s stock price to $1 in order to avoid the company being delisted from the Nasdaq exchange in early October. Shares closed at $0.28 on Wednesday.

Momentus’ profits soar

In-space transportation company Momentus (Nasdaq: MNTS) reported second-quarter revenue of $1.705 million, which was a 3,310 percent increase over the $50,000 the company received during the same period last year. Revenue for the first six months of 2023 was $1.727 million. The company’s revenue was $50,000 for the first half of 2022.

Momentus had an $18.8 million net loss for the second quarter, down from $22.9 million during the same three months of 2022. The net loss for the first half of the year declined from $49.7 million last year to $39.7 million.

Momentus reported $21.3 million in cash and cash equivalents and $488,000 in restricted cash when the quarter ended on June 30, 2023.

“The Company has been working to raise additional capital while pursuing and evaluating strategic alternatives. To that end, the Company engaged Deutsche Bank as its financial advisor,” Momentus said in an earnings release.

Momentus also announced this week it had received a contract from the Space Development Agency to tailor its Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle to support a full range of Department of Defense payloads and mission requirements. The contract’s initial value is $746,073 with an option for an additional $1.2 million to cover further work.

In other space SPAC news…

Planet Labs (NYSE: PL) completed the acquisition of Holding Sinergise, a Slovenia-based developer platform for Earth observation data. Planet said the purchase accelerates the advancement of its Earth Data Platform and the ability to efficiently deliver EO data to customers.

NASA selected Rocket Lab (Nasdaq: RKLB) to launch the space agency’s Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) mission, which will allow scientists to better understand how a warming world will affect sea ice loss, ice sheet melt, and sea rise level.