NASA interrupted Intuitive Machines' rally. Its shares were being bought up in anticipation of the SpaceX IPO

The U.S. aerospace agency has selected Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace and several other companies to send robotic landers, rovers and drones to the moon as part of a U.S. effort to accelerate the establishment of a lunar base by the end of the decade, Bloomberg reports. However, spacecraft maker Intuitive Machines was not on the list. The company's shares fell by almost 9% in trading on May 26 after rising by 16% during the day.

In 2024, Intuitive Machines became the first company to manage to land a commercial spacecraft on the surface of the moon in one piece. However, it tipped over on descent, limiting the mission's ability to land on the surface, Bloomberg recalls. The second landing attempt, made in March 2025, ended the same way. However, the company continues to receive contracts under NASA's lunar program: for example, in May, the agency commissioned it to operate and process data from imaging systems for a total of about $20 million.

On May 26, NASA awarded contracts worth $220 million each to Lunar Outpost and Astrolab to build rovers that will be able to travel autonomously on the Moon and, in the future, be controlled by astronauts to navigate the surface of the Earth's satellite. The agency also announced that Blue Origin will be tasked with delivering these rovers to the moon using the unmanned Mark 1 cargo lunar landing vehicle. Each rover landing and delivery will earn Blue Origin $234 million each. The three companies are non-public. But shares of another contractor, Firefly Aerospace, whose Elytra spacecraft will take the first drones to the moon to survey its surface, jumped 18.8 percent Tuesday. Those drones should help map potential landing sites and the location of a future base.

Shares of space-related companies on Tuesday continued a rally that began after Elon Musk's SpaceX disclosed its IPO filing last week. The offering could be the largest in stock market history and provide a boost to a wide range of players.

Retail traders are actively buying securities of public companies in the industry and specialized ETFs, trying to find other beneficiaries of this listing, explains CNBC. At the same time, not only suppliers and partners of SpaceX, but also its competitors can win, analysts interviewed by the channel say. The capitalization of Firefly, for example, soared by a third in the last five sessions.

Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald named Intuitive Machines among the "direct beneficiaries" of the upcoming giant IPO and recommended buying its stock.