PITTSBURGH, PA – August 23, 2010 – Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) spin-off company has announced that Caterpillar Inc. will be a sponsor its first robotic expedition to the lunar surface. The initial Astrobotic mission will revisit the Apollo 11 site in April 2013 with a five-foot tall, 160-lb. robot broadcasting 3D high-definition video. The mission will carry payloads to the Moon and convey the experience to the world via Internet video access.

The expedition also will claim a financial trifecta: up to $24 million in the Google Lunar X Prize, a $10 million data sale to NASA, and Florida’s $2 million bonus for launching from that state.

In 2007 Caterpillar sponsored Carnegie Mellon’s winning machine in the Urban Challenge, a competition for autonomous vehicles conducted by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The sensors and code base developed for this race of driverless cars through city traffic are evolving into the guidance and control for the spacecraft that will take Astrobotic’s robot to the lunar surface.

“Caterpillar has enjoyed a successful relationship with Carnegie Mellon University over the last two decades. Our sponsorship of CMU’s winning machine in the 2007 Urban Challenge has served as a technology foundation for further work to automate our large mining trucks,” said Eric Reiners, Caterpillar Automation Systems Manager. “Our customers are moving to more remote and harsh environments. This drives the need for further development of autonomous and remote operation of equipment. We look forward to applying the technology developed and lessons learned from the Astrobotic expedition toward our own Cat equipment.”

Carnegie Mellon and Astrobotic have expended more than $3 million creating mission designs and prototype Moon robots engineered to operate during extreme heat — soil temperatures at the lunar equator hit 224 degrees F at noon.

“Operating during the Moon’s daytime heat is the central engineering challenge for lunar robots, and we will take advantage of Caterpillar’s experience with rugged electronics for harsh environments,” said Dr. Red Whittaker, director of CMU’s Field Robotics Center and founder of Astrobotic Technology.

Caterpillar’s experience in autonomous mining and construction machinery also will assist with learning how to “live off the land” using lunar resources. For example, polar ice deposits can be transformed into propellant to refuel spacecraft for their return to Earth, doubling their productivity. New NASA research shows that some of the polar ice (a mix of water, methane and other compounds) is covered by an insulating layer of dry soil that robotic excavators can remove to access the volatiles.

“Caterpillar makes sustainable progress possible by enabling infrastructure development and resource utilization on every continent on Earth. It only makes sense we would be involved expanding our efforts to the 8th continent, the Moon,” said Reiners.

Astrobotic has just completed the first phase of a NASA contract to design lightweight robotic excavators for this task (see http://astrobotic.net/activities/lunar-construction-research-completed).

About Astrobotic Technology:
A spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University founded in 2008, Astrobotic Technology sells data, delivers payloads, and performs services on the Moon for space agencies, companies, foundation-backed researchers, and the media/marketing industries. Its robotic expeditions start with an equatorial exploration of an Apollo site, claiming the Google Lunar X Prize and collecting data for space agencies. Subsequent expeditions will prospect for volatiles at the poles and excavate these resources so they can refuel spacecraft for return flights to Earth. It has completed two research contracts for NASA on robotic lunar construction and mining technology, and is working on a third contract for simulating the Moon’s one-sixth gravity on Earth with a portable apparatus. More information is available at astrobotic.net.

PITTSBURGH, PA – August 6, 2010 – Astrobotic Technology, a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company devoted to robotic exploration of the Moon, announced that it will pursue NASA’s offer to buy up to $10 million in data from a commercial lunar lander mission. The space agency announced its Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program today with a total budget of $30 million.

The company’s first expedition will revisit Apollo 11 in April 2013 to claim a trifecta: up to $10 million in NASA data purchases, up to $24 million in the Google Lunar X Prize, and Florida’s $2 million bonus for launching from that state. The mission will connect the Internet to the Moon, deliver HD video in 3D, carry payloads and convey the experience to the world.

Carnegie Mellon and the company have expended more than $3 million creating prototype robots and mission designs following the 2007 announcement of the Google Lunar X Prize. The new NASA program to buy data from successful commercial landings will accelerate the company’s work on the spacecraft that will carry its robot down to the surface.

“The sensing devices and software needed for an automated lunar landing are evolving from our technologies for driving autonomous cars,” said Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, Astrobotic founder and director of CMU’s Field Robotics Center. “Much of the technology for winning DARPA’s Urban Challenge car race applies directly to lunar landing.”

Astrobotic Technology and CMU are now testing a prototype robot engineered to operate during extreme heat, and to survive lunar night. Soil temperatures at the lunar equator hit 224 degrees F at noon, cooking the rover from below as the Sun bakes it from above. The rover has a hot side with solar panels that it keeps pointed toward the Sun, and a cold side with a radiator that it keeps pointed at black sky. Cameras on top can turn 180 degrees so that operators on Earth can see the path ahead regardless of whether the rover is rolling forward away from the Sun or backward toward it. Lunar night is as cold as liquid nitrogen. Being able to survive lunar night extends the mission to another lunar day, and the Google competition pays a bonus for operating after enduring the night.

The rover weighs 160 lbs. and is about five feet tall. Its “Tranquility TrekTM ” mission to the Apollo 11 site is expected to last 10-12 days, until sunset cuts off solar power and the rover hibernates at temperatures expected to go as low as minus 298 degrees F. The robot will awake for further exploration two weeks later when the Sun rises, unless the extreme cold has damaged the electronics.

Subsequent AstroboticTM lunar expeditions will prospect for the water ice and other volatiles at the Moon’s poles, which can be transformed into propellant to refuel spacecraft for return flights to Earth, doubling the productivity of human missions. Astrobotic Technology has just completed the first phase of a NASA contract to design lightweight robotic excavators that can remove the dry insulating soil that covers some of  these valuable deposits.

“NASA is turning to companies like Astrobotic Technology and SpaceX to bring down the costs of space exploration,” said David Gump, Astrobotic’s president. “Along with lower costs, the private sector can create innovative events and promotions that involve the public, which is one of the factors that the NASA data buy wants to measure.”

The NASA announcement is available at http://procurement.jsc.nasa.gov/ildd/

PITTSBURGH, PA – March 15, 2010 – Astrobotic Technology today announced that it has vastly increased the amount of payload that it can deliver to the Moon for researchers and marketers, as part of its maiden expedition in 2012 to win the Google Lunar X Prize.

“We will carry 240 pounds to the lunar surface for space agency technologists, academic researchers and marketers,” said David Gump, president of Astrobotic. The company previously had offered only 12 pounds of payload to third parties.

The company posted a technical description of the service on its Web site, along with a “Request for Information” asking potential users to characterize how they would use this capability.

Celestis Inc. already has reserved 11 of the 240 pounds available on the initial Moon mission. Houston-based Celestis operates a space burial service for cremated remains, with eight missions thus far to the Moon, Earth orbit or a suborbital trajectory.

The remaining 229 pounds are available for $700,000 per pound, plus a $250,000 fee per payload to cover the engineering costs of integrating it into either the expedition’s lander or its solar-powered robot.

Ordinarily, researchers seeking access to the Moon or other planetary surface must develop an entire multi-instrument mission themselves. NASA spends several hundred million dollars for each of its ‘Discovery’ and ‘New Frontiers’ projects. The Astrobotic by-the-pound approach enables researchers and marketers to deploy a single instrument to the lunar surface for substantially less cost.

Astrobotic’s mission is pursuing a Google prize that will award up to $25 million for the first team to reach the Moon with an independently developed robot that transmits high-definition video after traveling at least 500 meters. Astrobotic will earn additional revenue from carrying payloads for space agencies, aerospace contractors and corporations.

To get both its 150-pound rover and 240 pounds of third-party payload to the Moon, Astrobotic intends to exploit the impressive lift capability of the Falcon 9 rocket developed by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. The initial launch of the Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral is expected in the next several weeks, following up on extensive ground testing and two successful launches of the precursor Falcon 1 rocket. Last year NASA awarded $1.6 billion in contracts to SpaceX to have the Falcon 9 deliver supplies to the International Space Station.

Astrobotic Technology Inc. plans a series of robotic Moon missions, first winning the Google prize and visiting Apollo 11 on the “Tranquility Trek” expedition in 2012. Later missions will prospect for water ice in at the Moon’s poles and seek out volcanic caves as low-cost shelters for both robots and astronauts. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has found three holes in the lunar surface that may be “skylights” into volcanic caves (lava tubes) beneath the surface.

About Astrobotic Technology

Astrobotic Technology was spun out from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in March 2008. Together they have won three NASA lunar research contracts and two contracts from commercial firms. Prototype rovers are now being field-tested at Carnegie Mellon University by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, the firm’s chairman. The company will license lunar data, deliver payloads and perform on-the-surface services for space agencies, aerospace contractors, researchers, corporate marketers and the media. More information is available at www.astrobotictech.com.

Here is the Payload Specification document.

A high-resolution image of the robot is available at

http://astrobotic.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/astrobotic_rover.jpg

Astrobotic media contact:

David Gump

412-682-3282

david.gump@astrobotictech.com

PITTSBURGH, PA – Nov. 23, 2009 – NASA today selected Astrobotic Technology and Carnegie Mellon University for two contracts to study Moon excavation robots and methods to simulate the one-sixth lunar gravity on Earth.

Lightweight excavation robots are key to recovering the water and hydrocarbon deposits at the Moon’s poles, which will enable explorers to “live off the land” rather than hauling all their supplies from Earth at great expense. New results from NASA probes released last week show that the water content in the polar soil is 10 to 30 times richer than previously thought, and in easier-to-access places than the floors of deep craters.

“We intend our robots to be prospectors for water and hydrocarbon resources, and then to demonstrate how they can be turned into rocket propellant and life support supplies,” said Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, founder of Astrobotic Technology and a research professor at the university’s Robotics Institute. “Creating propellant at the Moon will halve the cost of lunar exploration and advance the date when we can send human expeditions to Mars.”

Excavation is expected to be required to remove a top layer of dry soil covering ices deposited by comet and asteroid impacts.

The lunar gravity simulation study will examine the best ways to mimic the effects of the one-sixth lunar gravity via various active and passive gravity-offload mechanisms and ways to make the apparatus scaleable and transportable for field tests in challenging terrain.

NASA selected the excavation robot proposal under its Small Business Innovation Research program and lunar-gravity simulation proposal under its Small Business Technology Transfer program designed to move university research into the commercial sphere. The two Phase I awards total $199,850 and may lead to Phase II awards in six months totaling $1.2 million.

Astrobotic Technology Inc. is a Carnegie Mellon spin-off that will fund a series of robotic Moon missions, first winning the $20 million Google prize and visiting Apollo 11 on the “Tranquility Trek” expedition in late 2011. The Trek robot will be a rolling TV studio and Internet node, sending back high-definition video of its adventures. Later missions will prospect for water ice in deep polar craters and seek out volcanic caves as low-cost shelters for both robots and astronauts.

About Astrobotic Technology

The company has secured lunar contracts from NASA and two commercial firms. Prototype rovers are now being field-tested at Carnegie Mellon University by Dr. William “Red” Whittaker, the firm’s chairman. The company will license lunar data, deliver payloads and perform on-the-surface services for space agencies, aerospace contractors, researchers, corporate marketers and the media. More information is available at www.astrobotictech.com.