WASHINGTON — Intuitive Machines announced Aug. 13 that it won a $600 million contract from an undisclosed customer for three geostationary orbit communications satellites.

The company revealed in its second-quarter earnings results that it signed a contract for three satellites with an unidentified customer in June. It disclosed few other details about the award.

While Intuitive Machines is best known for its lunar landers and other lunar projects, it is also a GEO satellite manufacturer through its acquisition late last year of Lanteris Space Systems, formerly Maxar Space Systems. It produces GEO satellites using its 1300-series bus, now called IM 1300.

“In commercial space, we continue to see strong demand for our flight-proven IM 1300 series platform,” Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said during an earnings call. “In quarter two, we were awarded three geostationary communication satellites from an undisclosed customer, valued at over $600 million over the next 30 months.”

He declined later in the call to provide details about the order, including whether it is linked to the clearing of satellite C-band spectrum for terrestrial applications approved by the Federal Communications Commission last month. Satellite operators Eutelsat, SES and Telesat will receive more than $6 billion to vacate 160 megahertz of upper C-band spectrum, requiring new satellites to move services offered there either to the remaining portion of satellite C-band or other frequencies.

SES, by far the largest user of that spectrum, said it plans to deploy seven hybrid C/Ku-band satellites as part of that clearing process. An SES executive told the FCC in June that the company was “actively negotiating contracts” for both satellites and launches. Eutelsat and Telesat have not disclosed what new satellites, if any, they will procure as part of their efforts to clear that spectrum.

“In the future, we’ll come out and give you a little more color on that,” Altemus said when asked if the satellite order was linked to the C-band clearing.

In addition to the new GEO satellite orders using the IM 1300 bus, the company also has more than 70 of the smaller IM 300 satellites, also built by the former Lanteris, on order. That included an order for 18 satellites announced Aug. 4 for the Space Development Agency’s Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 program from prime contractor L3Harris.

Altemus said the company has more than 80 spacecraft under contract. That includes the IM 300 and IM 1300 satellites as well as lunar landers, lunar communications orbiters and other “one-off” spacecraft, such as an orbital transfer vehicle called Nebula.

“We have capacity and have been putting on additional capacity” to build those satellites, he said. The company is expanding facilities at its Houston headquarters to produce lunar spacecraft. “We have not yet tapped out the full 300 series production line” in California, he added.

Intuitive Machines provided an update on the call about five of those spacecraft, a lunar communications constellation. The first of those spacecraft, Altus-1, is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2027 as a rideshare payload on the Falcon 9 launch of the IM-3 lunar lander mission.

The company previously planned to launch the remaining satellites in a similar manner on later lander missions. However, Altemus said the four satellites will now be launched on a dedicated launch in 2028.

Doing so, he said, will speed up deployment of the full constellation, which would not have been completed until 2029 or 2030 using the original rideshare approach. Accelerated deployment would make the satellites available to support Artemis lunar landing missions.

“We are negotiating with NASA for a dedicated launch to fly all four simultaneously on an independent mission,” he said, but did not disclose the details of that effort, including any additional costs to the company for the accelerated deployment. The satellites are owned by Intuitive Machines, which will offer communications services to NASA and others on a “pay-by-the-minute” basis.