
Astrobotic's CubeRover program awarded $2M NASA contract - apsec112
https://www.astrobotic.com/2019/10/2/astrobotic-s-cuberover-program-awarded-2-million-contract-by-nasa
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johnwalkr
I'm a small rover guy so I am partial to this announcement but before and
after this announcement Astrobotic has 2 larger rover-related contracts with
NASA:

Astrobotic Awarded $5.6 Million Nasa Contract To Deliver Autonomous Moon
Rover[1]

Astrobotic Awarded $199.5 Million Contract To Deliver Nasa Moon Rover[2]

Such a small rover is a challenge due to the thermal environment on the moon.
By avoiding the lunar night, one can avoid the approximately -150C surface
temperature (depending on location). But you can still have a temperature
varying from -80C to 100C or more for a mission lasting 10 days. That's
skipping the first and last 2 days of one lunar daytime, which is of course
about 14 earth-days long, and is typical for a mission proposal. A short
mission duration lets you arguably get away from using rad-hard components and
a lot of redundancy. There's about 10 lunar rovers planned within the next few
years that I know of (and I mean mature designs such as this one, not the
other dozens of perennial projects that come and go).

It's going to be interesting to see the result of this kind of small rover
which could potentially fly multiple rovers once a year vs the more
"traditional" ~100kg, 10 year space agency project which is much more capable.
My bet is on iterating a 2-10kg rover 10 times.

Note: there is a John Walker at Astrobotic, but I am a different John Walker
working at different rover company.

[1] [https://www.astrobotic.com/2019/7/1/astrobotic-
awarded-5-6-m...](https://www.astrobotic.com/2019/7/1/astrobotic-
awarded-5-6-million-nasa-contract-to-deliver-autonomous-moon-rover)

[2] [https://www.astrobotic.com/2020/6/11/astrobotic-
awarded-199-...](https://www.astrobotic.com/2020/6/11/astrobotic-
awarded-199-5-million-contract-to-deliver-nasa-moon-rover)

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anm89
Astrobotic builds rovers and lunar landers in an unsassuming building in a
crowded urban area full of bars and restaurants in my city of Pittsburgh. I
won a hackacthon years ago and got to tour their facilities as a prize and my
mind was totally blown that I was just walking past this everyday and had no
idea it was there.

That was really inspiring to me in some weird way.

