Astrobotic awarded $250,000 in NASA contracts to bolster space exploration tech

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Astrobotic Technology, a Strip District-based lunar logistics and delivery startup, has been awarded $250,000 in NASA contracts to help the firm develop technologies and strategies for space exploration.

The funding comes through the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer ( STTR) programs.

One contract will address the growing space computing market that will support the current wave of robotic spaceflight customers.

By 2020, Astrobotic says its unmanned lunar lander, called Peregrine, will make regular trips to the moon, delivering items to the lunar surface on behalf of businesses, governments, universities and nonprofit organizations.

“This research will allow Astrobotic to develop advanced robotics capabilities for its Peregrine lunar lander, such as precision landing and hazard avoidance,” Kerry Snyder, senior research engineer and principal investigator for Astrobotic, said in a statement.

“If proven, these capabilities will allow us to deploy new computing architectures into a broad range of space applications quickly, reliably, and at low cost, with the potential to significantly increase the autonomy and performance of a range of spacecraft.”

A second contract — which Astrobotic will work on in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University — will investigate strategies for accurate localization of other planetary rovers.

In order to work together more efficiently and effectively, rovers must understand their location relative to their peers and the terrain, which is challenging in the absence of global positioning systems (GPS).

Astrobotic has been awarded over a dozen contracts through SBIR and STTR since 2010, ranging from about $99,000 to nearly $750,000 per award, according to www.sbir.gov.

It’s not uncommon for federal agencies to fund a significant portion of a startup’s work.

SBIR and STTR are programs of the Small Business Administration that encourage small, early stage businesses to engage in research and development that other investors might find too risky.

Astrobotic, which was spun out of CMU in 2007, has also raised $2.5 million in funding from a seed round led by New York-based investor Space Angels, according to Crunchbase, a website for firms to self-report financing rounds.

Additionally, the company took home $1.75 million from the Google Lunar XPrize competition.