Astrolab announces first customers for commercial lunar rover mission - SpaceNews
Astrolab announces first customers for commercial lunar rover mission - SpaceNews
Lunar rover developer Astrolab announced eight customers have signed contracts worth more than $160 million for its first mission to the moon in 2026.
"The company, formally known as Venturi Astrolab Inc., announced Nov. 21 that it signed the customers to fly payloads on Mission 1, a flight of the company’s Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) rover slated for as soon as mid-2026. Astrolab announced a contract with SpaceX in March to launch FLEX on that mission on a Starship commercial lander."
I love their rover concept. That's also a lot more customer money than I expected. From a risk standpoint, startups paying startups probably isn't ideal? Hopefully enough of them make it to launch, Astrolab gets some NASA contracts, and they can start to become a sustainable little business.
As an aside, if this rover is going up at the same time as Artemis 3 in 2026, it's frustrating that NASA isn't flexible enough to use the crew variant until Artemis 5 in 2030. Give 4 more toys! Part of what bugs me with the Artemis timeline is how infrequent the launches will be and how slowly it climbs the tech tree.