NASA awards Astrobotic $10 million to help land on the moon

My team at Astrobotic, Future Missions & Technology, developed, pitched, and seeded a $10M proposal opportunity last fall. We found out this week that we won it.

Post Gazette Article

The short story is that we're going to develop a flight Terrain Relative Navigation sensor for landers to determine their position during descent to the lunar or Martian surface, allowing them to land with greater precision than ever before. We're also developing the tools to increase the breadth of landing site these spacecraft can target, which will allow us to target the most compelling destinations on either body, including the poles of the Moon. The poles of the Moon represent some of the most scientifically interesting locations in the inner solar system, but we haven't yet sent landers and rovers to explore them from the ground. This sensor will help in that effort.

Our research team will lead the work, but we'll be supported by super strong partners at NASA JPL, JSC and Moog Space and Defense. I'm incredibly proud of FM&T (Kerry Snyder, Eric Amoroso, and Andrew Horchler), who have been grinding non-stop for two years get our work in front of the right audiences and build the coalition to get this done. It was terrifying and frustrating and challenging. It was also a full team effort - there was no way we could have done it without each other.

We've already started to hire a full team to get this done. If you want to work with us, check out our jobs (updates soon) and our site: https://www.astrobotic.com/technology