the agency announced its lunar base plans at the Ignition event in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cFundamentally, we need to move fast,\u201d he said. \u201cWith Moon Base coming out, we needed to scale, and we needed a partner that could do that, and Voyager is that in every way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selling to Voyager, he said, would allow it to scale faster than if it took outside investment. \u201cThe alternate path would have been raise some money, maybe try to go IPO after that. That probably takes 18 months all in,\u201d he said. \u201cWith the partnership with Voyager, we basically have access to public markets imminently when we close. That gives us an ability to scale now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The acquisition was part of Voyager\u2019s \u201cstrategic lunar initiative\u201d announced earlier this year that includes a much smaller investment in Max Space, a startup developing inflatable habitats that could be used as part of a lunar base.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been mapping out the space infrastructure company for many, many years,\u201d said Matt Maga\u00f1a, president of defense and national security at Voyager, in an interview. He said what was attractive about Astrobotic was not just its lunar lander work but also its development of other lunar infrastructure, notably power systems.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time that we mapped out what companies were there, what companies that we feel could be a great partnership,\u201d he said, \u201cAstrobotic was at the center of that map every single time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither Maga\u00f1a nor Thornton said which company initiated the discussions that led to the acquisition. \u201cWe both saw it as a real strong strategic partnership and an opportunity to meet the moment,\u201d Thornton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re geared to move very fast. We\u2019re geared to be partners with folks,\u201d Maga\u00f1a added.<\/p>\n
Voyager said that Astrobotic would remain in Pittsburgh and become the center of Voyager\u2019s overall lunar programs. Thornton said Astrobotic planned to expand its presence there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019ll be a foundational change for us as a business, for Astrobotic, because for 19 years we\u2019ve been basically living contract to contract, and piecing those contracts together into bigger things,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a fundamental game change for us, because now we can be strategic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really what we needed in this moment with Moon Base. The opportunities abound, and if we weren\u2019t ready to move at the speed that NASA needs, we would be left behind,\u201d he concluded. \u201cThis is the perfect partnership to meet the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 Lunar lander developer Astrobotic decided to sell to Voyager Technologies so it could quickly scale up…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":881339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[24],"tags":[75368,175568,916,159,16988,783,67,132,68,357999],"class_list":["post-881338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astrobotic","tag-moon-base","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-sn","tag-space","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-voyager-technologies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116784605990272560","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}