A Buying Opportunity for Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) Stock?

Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR) stock was one of the hottest plays of 2024. It shot from a low of $3.15 per share to as high as $24.95. 

If you played it perfectly, that would have amounted to a gain of nearly 700%. Of course, investors rarely get in at the bottom and out at the top. 

Still, there was ample opportunity to profit. 

For example, I recommended IM stock to my Secret Stock Files subscribers last June at a price of $3.60 per share. We sold out for a 150% gain in September.

In retrospect, we should have stayed in longer, but I’ve been investing in space stocks long enough to know how volatile they can be. 

After all, the reason we were able to buy IM below $4.00 per share to begin with was because the company’s first lunar lander tipped over on the moon’s surface last February. That caused IM stock to shed two-thirds of its value.

Now, as fate would have it, Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander (IM-2) just did the same thing last week.

As a result, the stock plunged 40%. 

Now investors want to know if that makes it a bargain. 

Will IM stock rebound like it did last year?

I don’t think so. And I’ll tell you why. 

LUNR Stock Is Lost in Space

Intuitive Machines stock may have tanked on another botched mission last week. But the truth is the stock had already entered into a free fall since late January.

And that’s because the Trump administration seems to have turned against NASA in general and its lunar missions in particular. 

It’s ironic because Trump himself started the Artemis program in his first term. But that was then. Today, Trump is co-presiding with Elon Musk, and Musk wants to strip NASA to its bones, jettison the moon program, and focus exclusively on Mars.

Trump is falling in line with that plan. He had a moon rock representing the ambition of the Artemis program removed from his office and pledged only to "plant the Stars and Stripes" on Mars.

Musk is also steering the Trump administration toward a 25%–50% reduction in NASA’s budget — a cut so severe it’s been described as an “extinction event.” And Artemis is one of the programs that appears to be on the chopping block.

Musk has called the moon mission a "distraction," and said America would be “going straight to Mars," instead. 

Specifically, Musk is targeting NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The vehicle, which is being developed by Boeing, was intended to take American astronauts back to the moon. 

But Musk wants to scrap it — a move that would conveniently leave his company SpaceX as the only viable alternative.

Boeing is warning that up to 400 jobs could already be cut due to "revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations."

And while it’s yet to be abandoned altogether, most believe it’s dead in the water, along with the broader Artemis program.

That’s a potential disaster for Intuitive Machines — one far greater in scale than a couple of toppled landers.

NASA is IM’s anchor customer. 

The company was initially brought into the Artemis program as part of a $2.6 billion NASA contract to conduct research on the lunar surface.

Last April, IM won a $30 million contract from NASA to develop a lunar rover as part of a broader Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services program carrying a total value of $4.6 billion across 15 years.

Then, in September, NASA awarded the company an incredible $5 billion contract for communications and navigation services connected to the Artemis program.

And in January, the company scored a modest $2.5 million contract to study lunar logistics like transporting, handling, and offloading cargo.

Contracts like these — big and small — are what drove the massive surge in IM stock. And they’re all part of the Artemis program that now finds itself in mortal danger. 

So while IM stock bounced back in a big way last year, I wouldn’t count on a repeat performance in 2025. Indeed, the fact that its latest lander is now abandoned, lying sideways in a crater on the far reaches of the moon’s surface, seems oddly appropriate.

Fight on,

Jason Simpkins