Shares of Intuitive Machines jumped 16% in trading Friday after the company’s successful first moon landing.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C cargo moon lander known as “Odysseus” on Thursday became the first privately developed spacecraft to land on the lunar surface — as well as the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on the moon in more than 50 years.

The company, based in Houston, Texas, confirmed that the IM-1 mission lander was standing upright and sending data back to Earth.

“Odysseus has found his new home,” Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ CTO and IM-1 mission director, said Thursday evening from the company’s mission control.

Intuitive Machines stock initially ripped 40% higher before paring gains with heavy trading volume to close at $9.59 a share. The company has a market valuation of about $1 billion.

The company’s stock has been rallying over the past month as excitement built in the lead-up to and progress of the IM-1 mission. Intuitive Machines went public via a SPAC a year ago and shares had steadily slid to all-time lows near $2 in January.

Wall Street analysts emphasized to CNBC ahead of the landing that the unprecedented nature of the event could lead to volatile momentum trading.

“We’ve never witnessed a publicly traded company go through [a moon landing attempt]. So this is new, not just for investors, but for us analysts as well,” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Andres Sheppard said before the landing.

In a note to investors after the landing, Cantor Fitzgerald increased its price target on Intuitive Machines’ stock to $13 a share from $4 a share.

“In our view, this validates the company’s technology and adds significant credibility to the business. As such, we believe Intuitive Machines is now very well positioned to continue to capitalize on the growing commercial space economy, and on subsequent launches,” Sheppard wrote in the note.

Intuitive Machines, in a statement Friday morning, said that “Odysseus is alive and well,” noting that the lander is charging its solar panels.

“Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the vehicle to download science data,” the company said.

The company and NASA plan to hold a press conference at 5 p.m. ET on Friday.

The Odysseus lander carried 12 government and commercial payloads — six of which are for NASA under a $118 million contract through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.

Intuitive Machines has already won two more CLPS contracts for future lander missions, with IM-2 expected to launch as early as the second half of this year.

Additionally, the company has part of a five-year $719 million contract to provide engineering services to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Analysts expect the Goddard contract is worth about $11 million per month in revenue for Intuitive Machines, with Cantor Fitzgerald estimating the company will bring in about $338 million in fiscal year 2024 revenue.

Amazon doesn’t plan to host its re:MARS conference on cutting-edge technologies like robotics and space this year, the company confirmed on Friday. It will incorporate the subjects into its existing lineup of Amazon Web Services events.

The tech giant launched re:MARS, which stands for “Machine learning, Automation, Robotics, and Space,” in 2019 as a way for startups, academics, researchers and executives to discuss the latest developments in these technologies. It morphed out of a private, invite-only version of the event, called Mars, that attracted tech elite and was hosted by Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos.

The decision to cancel re:MARS was not made for budgetary reasons, Amazon said.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been taking a hard look at costs across the company as it confronts slowing sales growth and a gloomy economic outlook. The company has undergone the largest layoffs in its history and Jassy has cut a number of initiatives, including the Amazon Care telehealth program, touring “treasure truck,” Glow children’s videoconferencing device and Explore virtual tours service.

Amazon used re:MARS to spotlight some of its futuristic innovations, such as delivery drones, warehouse robots, and its first home robot. Bezos also held talks on space colonization, and tested out a pair of giant remote-controlled robotic hands. At last year’s conference, Amazon demonstrated a feature where its Alexa digital assistant impersonated a deceased relative.

An Amazon Web Services spokesperson told CNBC in a statement: “AWS hosts hundreds of thousands of customers and partners every year at hundreds of events around the world. These events provide an invaluable opportunity to connect with our customers. Their time is precious and we take seriously the responsibility to make each event valuable for every attendee, whether that’s through developing new skills, identifying new solutions that will transform an organization, or building new connections that can advance a career. We consulted with customers and the community as always, and for 2023, decided to incorporate re:MARS topics — machine learning, automation, robotics, and space — into a well-funded lineup of existing AWS events.”