Tag Archives: Astrobotic Technology

NASA has selected Astrobotic Technology, Intuitive Machines and ORBIT Beyond as the first commercial lunar payload services contract recipients.

Yesterday Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh announced that it had been contracted by Toronto area company Canadensys to deliver payloads to the surface of the moon.

Less than a month ago NASA announced that nine companies had been selected as “couriers” for future payloads to the surface of the moon. The combined maximum contract value is $2.6 billion over the next 10 years. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is brilliant and here’s why.

There is some irony in the signing today of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Moon Express and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) at the International Astronautical Congress in Bremen.

By: Michelle Hanlon, co-founder, For All Moonkind, Inc. “Made on Earth by humans,” proudly proclaims the circuit board of the “midnight cherry” Tesla Roadster launched into space on SpaceX’s game-changing Falcon Heavy. In the glove box are, among other things, a copy of Douglas Adams’ iconic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a towel (of course) and a tiny quartz storage disc, prepared by the Arch …

This past week at the Lunar Science for Landed Missions Workshop, two commercial landing opportunities panels were organized that included representatives from Moon Express, Astrobotic, Blue Origin, iSpace, Masten Space, PT Scientists, Team Indus, Masten and Ceres Robotics.

The Google Lunar X Prize has a final hard date of March 31, 2018. If none of the finalists have completed their mission to the moon by that date then no one will win.  Even so, it’s clear now that the spirit of the competition has been met.

In his opening statement at the Subcommittee on Space Hearing on Private Sector Lunar Exploration, Brian Babin (R-Texas), Chair of the Subcommittee said “will space be the next sector to lead economic growth?” His answer, ” I don’t know.” It’s an important question and his answer was right.

Continuing with our Summer Reading Series of articles or interviews that still have some relevance today, we present Craig Covault’s June 2013 article The New Race for the Moon from Space Quarterly Magazine.

Space is hard. While startups success rates are slowly increasing in low earth orbit (LEO), it’s even harder for startups looking beyond low earth orbit. In fact, no company with the goal of operating a commercial enterprise near or on the moon, can call themselves a success, yet. But just maybe we’ll the emergence of one as a the result of the Google Lunar XPRIZE.