Astrobotic to collaborate with Air Force at Edwards AFB
A Pittsburgh, Pa.-based space and technology company that operates a testing facility at Mojave Air & Space Port in eastern Kern County has established a working relationship with the U.S. Air Force at Edwards Air Force Base.
Astrobotic, a developer of advanced navigation, operation and computing systems for spacecraft, as well as lunar landers and rovers designed to deliver payloads to the moon, announced Wednesday in a news release that it has entered into a Cooperative Research & Development Agreement with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Rocket Propulsion Division at Edwards Air Force Base.
The agreement “will leverage the parties’ complementary skillsets to achieve mutually beneficial goals,” Sean Bedford, Astrobotic’s director of business development, said in the release.
Bedford described Astrobotic as “an industry leader in reusable rocket design” including vertical takeoff, vertical landing rockets, a technology that makes the reuse of expensive rockets more routine and less costly in the long term.
“This agreement represents a unique partnership that will combine our strengths with (the Air Force Research Laboratory’s) subject matter expertise to accelerate development of key capabilities,” Beford said.
According to the news release, the public-private collaboration will help Astrobotic design, develop and test emerging commercial capabilities with critical applications to air and space military operations, including tactically responsive space access, hypersonic propulsion and testing, and tactical point-to-point rocket transport of cargo.
Under the agreement, both parties plan to use Astrobotic’s Xodiac and Xogdor-class vertical takeoff, vertical landing rockets to flight test new liquid rocket engines, integrated systems, payloads, and concepts of operation to mature these types of capabilities.
Javier Urzay, chief of the combustion devices branch at the Air Force Research Laboratory at
Edwards, said the agreement will enable joint work on new rocket engine technologies, including their applications to in-space propulsion.
The rocket-engine flight testbed, Urzay said in the release, will demonstrate future capabilities in rocket propulsion such as rotating detonation rocket engines, a relatively new propulsion concept that uses detonation combustion to more efficiently burn fuel.
Reducing the amount of fuel necessary for the rocket opens up more room for mission-oriented cargo, like larger satellites or other payloads.
“These technologies are still at a relatively early development stage,” Urzay said, “but have potential game-changing impacts for liquid and solid rocket propulsion systems relevant (to the missions of the Air Force and Space Force).”
Astrobotic acquired Mojave-based Masten Space Systems in September 2022, just weeks after Masten filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The acquisition brought with it Masten’s entire portfolio of advanced space technology, including its legacy of more than 600 vertical takeoff and landing rocket flights.
Masten may be gone as an independent enterprise, but Astrobotic is benefiting from Masten’s history of innovation in eastern Kern County.
Earlier this year, Astrobotic came tantalizingly close to delivering a lunar rover to the moon’s surface.
But one day after a successful launch in early January, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander developed a propellant leak. Nine days later, the Peregrine burned up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Astrobotic plans to try again in the fall with Griffin, a second lunar lander.