Houston Spaceport

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https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/a...s-exploration/



Texas A&M University Space Institute Director Nancy Currie-Gregg plants a flag for the new institute during a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024.

Texas A&M’s new Houston space institute to pave way for future moon, Mars exploration

Construction near NASA’s Johnson Space Center is expected to begin in January with a projected completion date of October 2026.

Kyle McClenagan | Posted onNovember 18, 2024, 4:50 PM (Last Updated: November 19, 2024, 12:31 PM)

Members of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents gathered in a grassy field near Houston last Friday for the groundbreaking of the university's new space institute.

The $200 million facility will be built near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and will focus on training astronauts for potential future trips to the moon and Mars. The Texas A&M Space Institute was approved last year following the passage of House Bill 3447. The bill secured a $350 million investment, of which $200 million was allocated for the new facility.

Texas A&M regent Bill Mahomes spoke at the event and said the university was equipped for the task.

"Last year, I approved the creation of the Texas A&M University Space Institute to strengthen the role of Texas as a global leader in the new space economy," he said. "This faculty will be vital for partnerships — research and commercial, that will help Texas businesses as we and NASA stay at the forefront of this final frontier."

Mahomes said the facility will assist in NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the moon. The program is named after the goddess Artemis who is the twin sister of the god Apollo in Greek Mythology. Apollo was also the name given to NASA’s first series of visits to the lunar surface.

"So, here is to hoping that Artemis can match or surpass her brother," Mahomes said. "In any event, at Texas A&M and the Texas A&M system, we are strapped in and ready to do our part."

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...-facility.html

Astronaut training co. Waypoint 2 Space to build Space Experience Center at Exploration Park near NASA

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Nov 25, 2024

A new facility to allow the general public to experience astronaut training is in the works near NASA Johnson Space Center.
Waypoint 2 Space, a company that has received Federal Aviation Association licensing for astronaut training courses, is in discussions to build a 35,000-square-foot training facility known as the Space Experience Center on the new Exploration Park development outside JSC, according to President and CEO Kevin Heath.

The new building will be open to the public with the goal of adding an interactive component for guests at Space Center Houston, the visitor arm of NASA Johnson Space Center. After the first building opens, future facilities could be franchised out, similar to private skydiving experience iFly, Heath said.

“The one thing I've always wanted to do was figure out a way to get me to space,” Heath said in an interview with the Houston Business Journal. “But I'm not rich, and I'm not brilliant. So, I started looking around, trying to figure out an area that I could add value and cater to people like me.”

Heath added that he raised $1 million in a 2021 seed round., and the company is offering 6% Convertible Preferred Series A shares totaling $10 million. Waypoint 2 Space has also applied for a Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium, or TARSEC, grant, which pulls from $150 million in state funding for Texas-based aerospace proposals.

Heath is targeting a March 2025 groundbreaking for the building, which would open in 2026. That timeline would line up with the nearby Texas A&M University Space Institute, a $200 million building that broke ground this month with the goal of testing commercial space landers.

Earlier this year, NASA announced that Austin-based ACMI will develop over 200 acres of land at Exploration Park, which is incentivized to bring commercial companies closer to JSC. Heath confirmed that ACMI would be the company building the Space Experience Center and that the parties have signed a letter of intent.

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...xpansions.html

Intuitive Machines to expand facility by 50%, other Houston Spaceport tenants to follow

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Dec 5, 2024

The facility where a historic spacecraft was built will be expanded, and the Houston Airport System’s new director promised more on the horizon for space companies.

During the annual State of the Airports event, Jim Szczesniak, director of the Houston Airport System, and Jack “2fish” Fischer, vice president of production and operations at Houston-based Intuitive Machines Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR), confirmed that Intuitive Machines will expand the capacity of its Lunar Production and Operations Center at the Houston Spaceport by 50%.

Kansas City-based Burns & McDonnell will continue to work with Intuitive Machines on the project. Burns & McDonnell built the current LPOC, which is owned by the city of Houston and leased to Intuitive Machines. The site, which spans 12.5 acres, opened in 2023.

“We do everything step by step; we do incremental growth, but we have to scale,” Fischer told the Houston Business Journal in an interview. “So as we continue to win contracts and grow our production capability as well as our number of employees, we need more parking spaces, we need more production facilities, we need more office space and storage facilities for some of the ground support equipment that we need to build those spacecraft.”

In a statement provided to the HBJ, Burns & McDonnell said the specifics of the project are currently unknown.

“We are committed to supporting Intuitive Machines with all their facility needs as their business evolves,” Josh Foerschler, aerospace, defense and space business development leader at Burns & McDonnell, said in the statement. “While the exact scope and size of the project are still unknown at this early stage, we provide tailored solutions to yield efficiency, adaptability and success in the dynamic space industry.”

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https://houston.innovationmap.com/in...671015229.html

Houston space company lands latest NASA deal to advance lunar logistics

John Egan

Jan 29, 2025, 2:45 pm

Houston-based space exploration, infrastructure, and services company Intuitive Machines has secured about $2.5 million from NASA to study challenges related to carrying cargo on the company’s lunar lander and hauling cargo on the moon. The lander will be used for NASA’s Artemis missions to the moon and eventually to Mars.

“Intuitive Machines has been methodically working on executing lunar delivery, data transmission, and infrastructure service missions, making us uniquely positioned to provide strategies and concepts that may shape lunar logistics and mobility solutions for the Artemis generation,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus says in a news release.

“We look forward to bringing our proven expertise together to deliver innovative solutions that establish capabilities on the [moon] and place deeper exploration within reach.”

Intuitive Machines will soon launch its lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to deliver NASA technology and science projects, along with commercial payloads, to the moon’s Mons Mouton plateau. Lift-off will happen at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida within a launch window that starts in late February. It’ll be the lander’s second trip to the moon.

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...asa-lease.html

JLL to lease 207-acre Exploration Park development outside NASA

The new commercial space development outside Johnson Space Center has a leasing partner.

JLL (NYSE: JLL) said Feb. 25 that it will oversee leasing of Austin-based ACMI Properties' space at Exploration Park, which spans over 200 acres. The brokerage team overseeing Exploration Park leasing for JLL consists of Senior Managing Director Richard Quarles, Vice President David Holland and Associate Angela Watford.

“There is no better place for the future of space exploration than NASA’s Johnson Space Center, a site that represents excellence in space discovery,” Quarles said in a press release. “We are thrilled to be a part of this development and know this will be a one-of-a-kind opportunity for businesses looking to make a lasting impact, whether it be through research and development or manufacturing.”

The announcement comes approximately a year after the Houston Business Journal first reported that ACMI had been selected to lease the 207 acres at Exploration Park, which is just outside the Johnson Space Center's controlled access area. Vanessa Wyche, Johnson Space Center’s director at the time, told the HBJ that NASA moved its controlled access area to free up room for private space companies to operate near JSC.

Initial concepts for ACMI’s buildings were unveiled last year, targeting a groundbreaking date in 2025 and a completion date of 2026. JLL confirmed both those timelines in its press release, with construction set to begin in the second quarter and the project expected to deliver in Q4 2026.

ACMI is planning for up to 22 buildings with a range of sizes from 15,000 to 500,000 square feet. However, those buildings could be replaced with a build-to-suit concept, JLL said. Facilities would include 24-30 feet of clear height for research and development, laboratories, clean rooms, offices, light assembly and manufacturing.

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...Pos=4#cxrecs_s

A rendering of the Starlab space station concept

With NASA review cleared, Starlab on track for 2029 space station launch


By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Mar 5, 2025

Another Houston company is a big step closer to launching its own space station in the next few years.

After the Starlab space station concept cleared its NASA preliminary design review this week, Starlab Space LLC is eyeing a 2029 launch for the station, CEO Tim Kopra told the Houston Business Journal.

But Kopra believes there’s room for more than one Starlab in low Earth orbit, especially with the International Space Station’s impending retirement. He flew several missions to the ISS, logging 244 days in space, and said his flight experience taught him several lessons that the company incorporated in Starlab's design.

“Human spaceflight is very evolutionary,” Kopra said. “You want to make sure that you take those lessons and implement those as closely as we can. We want to be very (capital expense)- and (operating expense)-efficient, which mean we take the best lessons learned and modify them where needed.

“A second Starlab would be about two-thirds of the cost [of the first] because all the nonrecurrent engineering is complete, the ground systems are in place, (and) we will have perfected our assembly, integration and testing. We think there’s certainly room for a second, third and fourth Starlab in the future.”

The federal government’s preliminary design review, or PDR, process ensures that projects fall within cost and schedule constraints.

Kopra said Starlab could be up for a critical design review — the next part of the government process — toward the end of 2025 or early next year. Passing the PDR allows the company to begin acquiring long-lead items for assembly of Starlab, secure in the knowledge that the design decisions have been vetted.

Starlab has a Space Act Agreement with Johnson Space Center that NASA initially awarded to Houston-based Nanoracks, which is owned by Starlab Space’s parent company, Denver-based Voyager Technologies.

Nanoracks' 2021 agreement was valued at $160.5 million. However, one of the companies awarded a Space Act Agreement at the time, Northrop Grumman, withdrew its separate entry from the process and partnered with Starlab Space, taking the company’s total from NASA up to $217.5 million. Starlab’s other commercial partners include Airbus, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, MDA Space, Hilton and Palantir Technologies.

Starlab Space also was one of the first Houston-area companies to secure a Space Exploration and Aerospace Research Fund grant from the Texas Space Commission last month. The company’s grant was worth up to $15 million.

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...Pos=4#cxrecs_s

Axiom Space and Red Hat partner for ISS-based data center mission

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Mar 6, 2025

A Houston space business is teaming up with a major tech company to target a growing subsector.

Axiom Space, which is designing a commercial space station to replace the International Space Station, and Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat Inc. will partner for Axiom Space’s Data Center Unit-1 (AxDCU-1), which is set to launch this spring to the International Space Station. A more specific launch date was not immediately available.

The partnership continues a trend of companies looking skyward for data center transmission and storage services, such as orbital data centers, or ODCs. Axiom Space said in a March 5 press release that Red Hat Device Edge, a platform geared toward devices with limited computing resources, power, cooling or connectivity, will power the AxDCU-1.

“Infusing terrestrial-grade cloud solutions into ODCs will enable users to seamlessly transition and enhance their terrestrial workloads to orbit while leveraging the lower latency and increased security inherent with ODCs,” Jason Aspiotis, global director of in-space data and security with Axiom Space, said in the release.

Aspiotis told the Houston Business Journal that AxDCU-1 will fly with the ISS, which is approaching retirement by the end of the decade. Axiom Space said there is nothing to announce currently about whether Red Hat would partner with Axiom Station, the company’s planned space station replacement. The company also said it is currently unknown whether its upcoming Ax-4 crewed mission will be working with the data center.

Use cases for Axiom Space's data-processing abilities could range from multifactor authentication to space weather analysis, off-planet data backups and disaster recovery for critical infrastructure on Earth, the company said.

Early Axiom Space customers could include governments operating satellite network “constellations” that are already generating data, as well as private and public entities looking for the security of space-based data storage, Aspiotis said. As the cost of space launches decreases, more sectors — like telecommunications, financial services, internet-of-things providers and autonomous mobility providers — could add to that customer base, he added.

For now, Aspiotis said, orbital data centers won’t be able to match Earth-based data centers in terms of storage — but in the long term, especially as data centers demand increasing amounts of energy and real estate, ODCs could catch up.

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Is this something? Not the Spaceport/JSC, but Baytown isn't exactly far away.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...ions-to-texas/

To avoid the Panama Canal, Relativity Space may move some operations to Texas

"We are exploring options to expand our manufacturing capabilities."

Eric Berger – Mar 14, 2025 12:51 PM

As he consolidates control over Relativity Space, new owner and chief executive Eric Schmidt is planning significant changes at the launch company, including a likely move to the Lone Star State.

Schmidt's recent acquisition of the California-based company, which has largely evolved away from its 3D-printing origins to becoming a more conventional rocket developer, has solved Relativity's primary need. The company has been in a cash crunch for months, and being acquired by one of the 50 wealthiest people on the planet provides financial stability.

Big rocket, big logistics

As Ars reported last September, the company's initial plan was to manufacture first stages at its massive factory in Long Beach, California, and ship them through the Panama Canal to a test site at the Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. From there, they would be moved by barge again to the launch site in Florida. The total shipping cost to get a first stage to Florida and a barge back to Long Beach was at one point estimated to be as high as $3.45 million.

However, two sources have indicated that Relativity Space will likely move a significant portion of its Terran R manufacturing to Baytown, Texas. This is a small city just east of Houston that, as its name suggests, is located on a bay. In the Houston metro area, Baytown is known for its ample petrochemical facilities, located on the Houston Ship Channel, which offers easy access to Galveston Bay and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico.

Although Baytown does not have any historical affinity with aerospace, its location on the water offers far more straightforward access to Relativity's test facilities in Mississippi and its launch site in Florida. There are other benefits. The cost of living in the region is far lower than Southern California, and due to the location of Johnson Space Center just 20 miles away, there is a reservoir of space talent in the region.

A spokesperson for Relativity Space did not confirm the move.

"As we scale Terran R production to meet growing customer demand, we are exploring options to expand our manufacturing capabilities," the spokesperson said. "Our focus is on ensuring we have the right footprint to achieve the production cadence required to serve our customers."

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...ar-mining.html

Lunar mining co. Interlune finalizes $4.8M Texas Space Commission grant, preps Houston expansion

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Sep 4, 2025

The first tenant in Texas A&M University's $200 million space-testing hub said it’s ready to begin its move to Houston with the help of state money.

Interlune — a Seattle-based startup that wants to mine moon dirt, also known as regolith — confirmed it has finalized a $4.8 million grant to move into the Texas Space Institute. The company will occupy another location in Houston while the Space Institute's construction continues, though representatives for Interlune declined to disclose where that will be.

Interlune’s chief scientist, Elizabeth Frank, will lead the company’s Houston team, where Interlune will create lunar regolith simulants to test its helium harvester, a vehicle designed to extract helium-3 from the moon’s surface.

“Lunar regolith is different from dirt here on Earth, so a highest-fidelity testing environment on Earth is of tremendous value to Interlune and the entire lunar exploration community,” Rob Meyerson, Interlune co-founder and CEO, said in a press release. “This support from the Texas Space Commission to develop novel lunar regolith simulants will create a massive U.S. advantage in space innovation.”

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/...Pos=3#cxrecs_s

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin was sole bidder for $190M NASA contract to deliver Houston-built VIPER rover to moon

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Sep 24, 2025

A space company belonging to one of the world’s richest men will ferry a Houston-built rover to the moon in 2027.

NASA awarded a $190 million task order to Blue Origin last week to ferry the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the moon’s surface. The award caps off a yearlong saga after NASA initially pulled the plug on VIPER in July 2024 and began seeking private industry proposals to fly the craft.

A NASA spokesperson told the Houston Business Journal this week that Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin was the sole bidder from the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services vendor pool to fly VIPER. Blue Origin is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon.

“NASA solicited proposals from the CLPS vendor pool and received one proposal for this delivery,” NASA said in a statement. “The agency evaluated the submission in accordance with standard procurement procedures and determined it met NASA’s requirements, leading to this award.”

Under the terms of the deal, Blue Origin will fly VIPER using its Blue Moon Mark 1, or MK1, lunar lander, which is built and integrated in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Blue Origin has not flown the Mark 1 yet, but it will launch a $6.1 million CLPS mission using MK1 later this year.

A Blue Origin representative directed the HBJ to statements the company made on X, formerly Twitter, describing MK-1 as “well-suited” for VIPER. NASA said its intent is not to physically modify the rover, which was assembled in June 2024 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, so any needed modifications would have to be made to Blue Origin’s lander.

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https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2025/11/07/intuitive-machines-ceo-talks-lanteris-acquisition.html?cx_testId=40&cx_testVariant=cx_27&cx_artPos=1#cxrecs_s

Behind the deal: Intuitive Machines' CEO says $800M satellite-builder deal takes Houston co. to the top

By Jishnu Nair – Reporter, Houston Business Journal
Nov 7, 2025

Stephen Altemus has always wanted Intuitive Machines Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR) to be a national asset to the United States. This week, the Houston-based company took several major steps toward that goal.

IM is shelling out $800 million to buy satellite-maker Lanteris Space Systems, formerly named Maxar Space Systems. And Altemus confirmed to the Houston Business Journal that his company started construction on the $12.5 million expansion of its Lunar Production and Operations Center at the Houston Spaceport this week.

During an investor call discussing the Lanteris deal, Altemus said the deal made IM a “next-generation space prime.” He told the HBJ that designation means the company is ready for a faster government contracting process and to win deals for more complex systems.

“I’m happy to say that we flew to the moon, that we landed on the moon, but in order to build bigger, more complex systems, we needed to scale,” Altemus said. “The production to scale those systems takes years and years to build and perfect.”

That’s why Lanteris helps complete IM’s maturation, Altemus added. He highlighted the reliability of the company’s satellites and the scale of Lanteris’ production operations as a complement to IM’s own production capability.

“We can go fast and build custom spacecraft, like the Nova-C lander. But can we produce 300 satellites? We weren’t there yet, and that would take three to five years to put a production line in place,” Altemus said.

IM is targeting a 90-day transition period to complete the acquisition, and — assuming there are no regulatory holdups to the deal — that Lanteris will begin operating as a subsidiary of IM at the start of 2026, Altemus said.

But over the following nine to 12 months, Lanteris and Intuitive Machines will integrate into one company, he added.