Astrobotic Technology

Astrobotic Technology is a lunar logistics company that focuses on multi-agent robotic missions and surface autonomy by developing custom designs, sensor systems, and rovers for planetary surface activities. The company provides end-to-end delivery services for payloads to the Moon and owns a 47,000 sqft complex, the largest private facility dedicated to lunar logistics as of 2024. 

The company has developed two lunar landers; Griffin, its small-class lander (the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon since the Apollo program) and Peregrine, its medium-class lander. As of 2024, the price to lunar orbit on both vehicles was USD 300,000 per kg. The company’s Cuberover, weighing just 4 kg, provides affordable mobility for scientific instruments and other payloads to operate on the lunar surface, while its Polaris Rover can accommodate diverse lunar payloads with distinct mission profiles (lunar regolith digging or water ice harvesting), supporting up to 90 kg of payload mass, travel long distances, and provide direct-to-Earth (DTE) communication. A trip to the Moon and all the rovers’ services are included in a USD 4.5 million/kg payload price. In addition, the company provides products and services for landing, navigation, exploration, robotics, and software.

In January 2024, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander was launched on the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket. However, the mission was unsuccessful due to a propulsion system failure. Despite this, Astrobotic reported that it extracted data from nine out of 20 payloads.

In September 2022, Astrobotic acquired Masten Space System for USD 4.5 million after Masten filed for bankruptcy, gaining Masten's space technologies, including its vertical take-off and landing (VTVL) rocketry and propulsion test facilities. In addition to continuing to build the Xogdor rocket (Masten’s newest rocket with supersonic speed), Astrobotic reported it would continue suborbital flight operations at Masten's facility in Mojave and continue to operate Masten’s propulsion tests.

Key customer and partnerships

The company has partnered with NASA on several occasions and was awarded many contracts by NASA including a USD 199.5 million contract to deliver NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) to the moon’s South Pole in late 2023. The company has also partnered with several institutions such as the Astrobotic and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Space, High-performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC) to develop new software and hardware technologies for future space applications.

In June 2023, Astrobotic partnered with Westinghouse Electric Company to develop space nuclear technology and delivery systems for  NASA and the US Department of Defense.