Mission-based space companies don't grow in a straight line. Here's what to actually watch.
↓ scroll to read
✦ The bottom line
FY2025 revenue fell 8%. Q1 2026 revenue tripled — but only because they bought another company. The honest read is in the backlog.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Money coming in
Every dollar customers paid Intuitive Machines — for lunar lander missions, NASA engineering services, and (starting Jan 2026) the satellites their newly-acquired Lanteris division builds.
For a mission-based space company, revenue is lumpy. A lander launches in February? Revenue spikes. The next one doesn't launch until late next year? Revenue dips. The headline number alone can mislead.
Wall Street calls this
Revenue
When revenue is lumpy by *design,* you watch *backlog* — what they've already won — instead. That's the next-year preview.
Total revenue · full year 2025
$210
M
Down from $228M in 2024 — an 8% decline. The IM-2 mission wrapped in March 2025; the IM-3 mission won't launch until late 2026.
Source · 10-K · Income Statement · FY2025 · Filed Mar 19, 2026
An 8% revenue decline is the kind of number that scares first-time investors. But space companies don't sell subscriptions — they execute missions on multi-year contracts, and the timing of those missions makes revenue lumpy. IM-1 launched in February 2024. IM-2 launched in March 2025. IM-3 is targeted for late 2026. The dips between missions are expected. The question is whether they're winning new missions to refill the pipeline. So here's what just happened in the most recent quarter.
Total revenue · Q1 2026
$187
M
Triple Q1 2025's $63M — but $142M of it is brand new. It came in via the Lanteris acquisition (a satellite-manufacturing business they bought Jan 13). The legacy Intuitive Machines service business shrank to $42M from $63M a year earlier.
Source · 10-Q · Income Statement · Q1 FY26 · Filed May 15, 2026
So the headline revenue tripled, but the organic business shrank. That's important: a company can look like it's growing when it's really just bought growth. The two numbers tell different stories. The honest forward-looking number — for any mission-based contractor — is backlog. That's the dollar value of work already awarded but not yet performed. Like an order book. Here's where it stands now.
Contracted backlog · as of March 31, 2026
$1.1
B
Up from $213M at year-end 2025 — a 5x jump almost entirely from absorbing Lanteris's contract book. 5+ years of revenue at current pace, if they execute.
Source · 10-Q · Key Business Metrics — Backlog · Q1 FY26 · Filed May 15, 2026
⚠
Watch
Revenue is lumpy. Backlog 5x'd via acquisition — not organic. The forward read depends on executing what they've already won.