Nearly two years after breaking ground, the Texas A&M Space Institute is beginning to take shape near Houston’s Johnson Space Center — and it’s on track to open later this year.
The $200 million facility, backed by the Texas Space Commission, recently completed the 400,000-square-foot building’s structural frame, according to the Houston Business Journal.
Work has now shifted to its most anticipated feature: the world’s largest indoor Moon and Marscapes. Spanning 234,000 square feet, the simulated terrains are designed to give companies and researchers a place to test equipment, rehearse missions and refine vehicles at scale, before leaving Earth.
“This facility is becoming a reality, and there’s truly nothing like it anywhere in the world,” said Jack Fischer, Senior Vice President of Operations at Intuitive Machines, in a news release. “We’re establishing a center of excellence that enriches the greater Houston community and the global space industry.”
A New Home for the Space Industry
The facility is already attracting companies to Houston. Intuitive Machines has signed a lease for one of the facility’s bays where they will test its Moon RACER rover, a vehicle being developed for NASA’s Artemis campaign designed to carry astronauts and cargo across the lunar surface.
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California-based Astrolab has also secured space at the Institute to develop and test its FLEX rover, another NASA-selected candidate to transport astronauts across the Moon’s surface. The company has committed to growing its local Houston team to more than 200 people by the end of 2026, according to the Houston Business Journal.
Seattle-based Interlune, backed by a nearly five million Texas Space Commission grant, is establishing the Lunar Regolith Simulant Center at the Institute, where it will develop simulated Moon dirt, a critical resource for testing the vehicles and technology being built for lunar missions.
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Interlune will supply Astrolab with its simulated Moon dirt to support the company’s FLEX rover testing, an early sign of the collaboration the Institute is expected to foster.
The company will also use the simulated Moon dirt to test its helium harvester — a device designed to extract helium-3, a resource scarce on Earth but abundant on the Moon that has the potential to power everything from medical imaging machines to quantum computers.
As NASA’s Artemis program advances and commercial lunar activity accelerates, the Texas A&M Space Institute is positioning the Houston region as a hub for the next era of space exploration.
Learn more about Houston’s aerospace industry.