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Havish Gupta
Figuring Out • 1m
Astrobotic, The SpaceTech Startup Leading the Return to the Moon So, Astrobotic was founded in 2007 by Red Whittakerwith the goal of becoming the first commercial operation to land on the Moon. Their team have over 275 employees with more than 1,000 years of combined space industry experience. Over the past decade, Astrobotic has received multiple grants and contracts for space research. But The most significant milestone came in 2019, when the company secured a $79.5M contract from NASA under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. CLPS program aims to send scientific and commercial payloads to the Moon using private companies. Following this contract, Astrobotic built the Peregrine lunar lander, designed to carry various payloads to and around the Moon. Although the lander successfully launched on January 8, 2024, a fuel leak prevented it from reaching the lunar surface, and it was eventually directed to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. Despite the launch failure, this mission demonstrates that NASA increased trust for commercial companies for space mission and also that private firms are now capable of building advanced space systems which was once limited to the government. So, in the future, do you think space tech companies will eventually overtake government organizations in this field?
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