By Savannah Bullard<\/p>\n
One year after winning second place in NASA\u2019s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, members of the small business Starpath visited NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of their prize opportunity to test their upgraded lunar regolith excavation and transportation rover in the center\u2019s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber.<\/p>\n
The technology startup headquartered in Hawthorne, California, won second place overall<\/a> at the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge\u2019s live demonstration and finale in June 2024. This competition, one of NASA\u2019s Centennial Challenges, tasked competitors to design, build, and demonstrate robotic technologies that could excavate and transport the icy, rocky dirt \u2013 otherwise known as regolith \u2013 found on the Moon.<\/p>\n \u201cNASA\u2019s Centennial Challenges are a great way to discover new, innovative technologies, including those for future use on the Moon and even Mars,\u201d said Naveen Vetcha, Break the Ice Lunar Challenge manager at NASA Marshall. \u201cWorking with winners after the challenge concludes is a perfect example of how we can use NASA facilities to continue advancing these technologies to generate valuable solutions for the agency and industry.\u201d<\/p>\n Starpath built a four-wheeled rover capable of excavating, collecting, and hauling material under extremely harsh environmental conditions that simulate the lunar South Pole. On the rover, a dual drum barrel can extend from the body of the robot \u2013 mimicking a movement similar to a crab\u2019s claws \u2013 and scrape into rough, hard regolith to excavate material quickly without compromising finite battery life.<\/p>\n Before Starpath made the 2,000-mile drive from California to Alabama this summer, NASA Marshall\u2019s Engineering Test Facility staff prepared a concrete slab outfitted with rocky terrain to act as a testbed for the robot to interact inside the chamber. The V-20 Thermal Vacuum Chamber<\/a>, located at Marshall\u2019s Environmental Test Facility<\/a>, can simulate harsh environments by manipulating the chamber\u2019s vacuum, temperature, humidity, and pressure effects. Starpath staff spent about three days at NASA Marshall in August, testing their robot with excavation and mobility trials while collecting data on its performance.<\/p>\n The Starpath team is honing the development of its technology for missions located at the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar South Pole. As a future landing site for NASA\u2019s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon and prepare to send the first Americans to Mars, the South Pole region of the Moon is known to contain ice within its regolith. This was the leading inspiration behind the development of the Break the Ice Lunar Challenge, as NASA will require robust technologies that can excavate and transport lunar ice for extraction, purification, and use as drinking water or rocket fuel.<\/p>\n NASA\u2019s\u00a0Break the Ice Lunar Challenge was a\u00a0NASA Centennial Challenge<\/a>\u00a0that ran from 2020 to 2024. The challenge was led by the agency\u2019s\u00a0Marshall Space Flight Center<\/a> with support from\u00a0NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Florida. Centennial Challenges are part of the\u00a0Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program<\/a>\u00a0under NASA\u2019s\u00a0Space Technology Mission Directorate<\/a>.<\/p>\n For more information about the challenge and its conclusion, visit:<\/p>\n