Lunar Delivery as a Service: What CLPS Changed—and How to Build a Real Business

Concept art for Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander, a design for NASA’s CLPS.
Credit: Intuitive Machines

After Odysseus, the play shifts from “can we land?” to “who pays, for what, and on what cadence?”

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) flipped the script on how America buys Moon missions: instead of building landers in-house, the agency now procures delivery services from private providers. That change compressed procurement cycles and created a path for non-traditional players to reach the surface—if they can meet schedules and survive the lunar environment. CLPS is explicit about its intent: make lunar access rapid, frequent and commercially viable by purchasing services, not spacecraft, and letting industry own the platforms.

In February 2024, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus (IM-1) became the first US spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon since Apollo—and the first private mission ever to do so. The landing wasn’t picture-perfect; the lander likely tipped on its side after touchdown. Yet it delivered payloads and data, validating the core CLPS premise that private contractors can get you to the surface.

Set against that milestone are sharp reminders that lunar delivery is an unforgiving business. Astrobotic’s Peregrine never reached the surface after an oxidiser tank over-pressurised due to a misbehaving valve; the company’s post-mission report details the chain of events and corrective actions. Meanwhile, NASA cancelled the VIPER rover in July 2024 to protect funding for other CLPS flights—illustrating how government demand, while catalytic, can also be volatile for any single provider. Japanese firm ispace has now suffered two failed landing attempts (2023 and 2025), underscoring how slender the margins remain for newcomers.

So how do startups turn this into a repeatable business, not a one-off win? The operating model that’s working in adjacent space markets applies here: service packaging, multi-mission cadence, and risk transparency. Treat the lander as a configurable product line and sell the outcomes customers actually buy—payload delivery and on-surface operations—with published interfaces, priceable options (thermal, mobility, comms), and integration support that removes guesswork for first-time lunar customers. The GTM tone that resonates is pragmatic and buyer-centric: speak in services and SLAs, not in qubits of heritage or artist’s impressions.

Cadence, not payload mass, tends to determine enterprise value. Regular flights de-risk integration schedules for agencies, universities and commercial payload owners, and they create a learning loop that lowers fault rates. Providers signalling a runway of missions—for example, Firefly’s Blue Ghost line of CLPS task orders spread across multiple years—help buyers plan multi-flight campaigns and spread risk across attempts. The more predictable the calendar, the easier it is for payload customers to budget, test, and come back for the next window.

Revenue concentration is the killer risk. CLPS demand is powerful but political; a programme decision can ripple through a provider’s entire P&L, as VIPER showed. The counter is customer mix: combine agency work with (i) international space programmes that lack domestic landers, (ii) resource-prospecting and technology-demonstration payloads from energy/mining/materials companies, and (iii) data services (imaging, in-situ measurements) where customers buy results instead of kilograms. A thin layer of insurance-backed terms—clear definitions of delivery, partial-credit frameworks for safe orbit insertion or data return, and pre-agreed reflight rights—helps procurement teams get comfortable with lunar risk without rewriting policy.

Reliability storytelling must be specific. Buyers have read the failure reports; they’ll ask what changed. Publish configuration deltas mission-to-mission, show how your FMEAs connect to hardware redesigns, and bring an independent test witness to key milestones. When the inevitable anomaly occurs, aim to contain it so the mission still creates value—Odysseus’ sideways rest limited some instruments but still returned data, which matters to agencies and insurers eyeing partial-performance clauses.

Two adjacent capabilities can widen margins. First, surface mobility and night-survival options turn a delivery into a campaign, increasing time on task and creating upsell paths for follow-on measurements. CLPS explicitly contemplates mobility and on-surface services; packaging these as modules gives small payload teams more ways to succeed. Second, onboard autonomy that safely handles latency and degraded sensors reduces ops overhead and broadens landing windows—valuable for customers who can’t retune experiments on short notice.

What about competition? Expect consolidation and partnerships rather than a dozen stand-alone lander brands. The providers who become platforms—shared avionics, common integration kits, tested thermal stacks—will lower customer switching costs and, paradoxically, make buyers more loyal because the pathway to scale feels boring and auditable. Those who stay as bespoke projects will struggle to win follow-ons after a first mission, no matter how glossy the rendering.

The commercial endgame isn’t a single heroic landing; it’s a ladder: payload delivery → campaigns with mobility and power → site preparation for communications, science and resource pilots. CLPS opened the door. Now the market will reward the teams that turn landers into services with cadence, clarity and credible risk controls—so the Moon becomes a place you schedule, not a stunt you attempt.