The intuitive machine may have crashed the latest Moonlander on the moon, but that hasn’t held back the company for a long time.
The Houston-based company chose SpaceX to launch the IM-4, the IM-4, in 2027, on the Falcon 9 rocket. The news comes weeks after the company’s IM-2 Moonlander crashed near the Antarctic on the moon, and the company continues to work with the Third Moonlander (yes, it’s called the IM-3), and is set to be released in 2026.
“Lunar distribution and data relay satellites are central to our strategy for commercializing the moon,” says intuitive mechanical CEO Steve Altemus said in a statement Tuesday (April 8th). “We plan to deploy the first of the five lunar data relay satellites on the third mission, which will introduce per-paid services. The two additional satellites on the fourth mission are intended to expand their services, followed by two additional deployments, with two additional deployments to fully support NASA and the commercial moon operations.” The relay satellites support space network service contracts near NASA, writes an intuitive machine.
The intuitive machine IM-4 Moonlander will feature six NASA payloads based on an agreement with the agency’s Commercial Month Payload Services program. It will be equipped with a new drill experiment built by the European Space Agency to hunt water near the Antarctic of the Moon.
The first Moonlander of an intuitive machine called the IM-1 Odysseus tilted after breaking its landing leg when it attempted to land in 2024. The second lander, IM-2 Athena, fell to that side in an attempt to land an Antarctic on the moon on March 6th.
The IM-3 Moonlander is currently under construction.
