Photo: Artist's concept by John Frassanito and Associates/NASA

A Delaware federal judge has upheld a $4.1 million jury verdict in favor of a Houston-based engineering startup in a breach-of-contract suit over technology for a spacecraft and lunar lander vehicle capable of transporting experiments from the International Space Station.

U.S. District Chief Judge Leonard P. Stark of the District of Delaware on Monday declined to roll back the Jan. 12 verdict, which awarded Intuitive Machines cash and equity in Moon Express Inc. as a result of Moon Express' failure to complete work on the software underpinning its project.

According to court documents, Moon Express, which is based at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, had hired Intuitive machines to write flight software and build a terrestrial return vehicle for its commercial lunar transportation business.

The company sued in 2016, after the partnership broke down, alleging that Intuitive Machines had lied about its ability to meet its obligations under two contracts. Intuitive Machines countered that it had met its contractual duties and had only stopped work because Moon Express had failed to make agreed-upon payments.

Following a five-day trial, a Wilmington jury sided with Intuitive Machines, awarding damages of $1.25 million in cash and $2.25 million in Moon Express equity for breaches of one contract. The panel also awarded $732,000 on another contract that was at issue in the suit.

Moon Express moved for a new trial with respect to both contracts. The company argued that the jury had overlooked evidence that Intuitive Machines had deliberately breached its obligations by refusing to deliver software that it had already developed, nixing Moon Express' duty to provide a test vehicle to Intuitive Machines to perform a crucial "tethered test," which would have triggered a payment under the one of the contracts.

However, Stark noted that Moon Express had taken the opposite position at trial, telling the jury that Intuitive Machines needed to perform the test on a test vehicle in order to get paid.

"Moon Express' post-trial about-face is striking," Stark wrote Monday in a 20-page memorandum order.

Stark said that the jury had heard testimony from Moon Express' own CEO, Bob Richards, that the company had never provided a test vehicle and had no intention to, because it was contemplating a new vehicle design and had decided that a tethered test was no longer suitable for Intuitive Machines' software.

"While the jury was not compelled to credit all of Intuitive Machines' evidence, it was free to do so," Stark wrote. "In the court's view, there was plainly enough evidence to support the jury's finding."

Stark's ruling Monday also granted Intuitive Machine's request for attorney fees and denied Moon Express' request that the judgment be stayed pending Intuitive's request to have the equity portion of the verdict converted to cash. Both sides are set to argue the motion early next year.

Attorneys for both sides were not immediately available Tuesday afternoon to comment.

Moon Express is represented by R. Craig Martin, Ilana H. Eisenstein, Michael P. O'Day and Marc A. Silverman of DLA Piper.

Intuitive Machines is represented by David J. Wolfsohn and Oderah C. Nwaeze of Duane Morris.

The case, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, was captioned Moon Express v. Intuitive Machines.