The acquisition, first announced in early June, values Astrobotic at $162 million in cash and stock, but the deal also includes an additional $129 million in earnout payments contingent on meeting performance milestones, bringing the total consideration to just shy of $300 million.<\/p>\n
The closing follows a busy stretch for Astrobotic. The company shipped its Griffin-1 lunar lander from its Pittsburgh headquarters to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for environmental tests ahead of a launch planned for as soon as the fourth quarter of this year. Griffin-1 will deliver Astrolab’s FLIP rover to the moon, along with several smaller payloads. On June 30th, NASA awarded Astrobotic two missions of its smaller Peregrine-2 lander for $298 million. Those landers are set to launch in 2028 carrying an identical set of three NASA payloads to a landing site near the Gruithuisen Domes, a set of extinct lunar volcanic domes on the near side of the Moon.<\/p>\n
John Thornton, the longtime chief executive of Astrobotic, will remain as head of Voyager Lunar Systems. “Astrobotic was built to make the moon accessible to the world, and joining Voyager will hit the accelerator on that mission for our customers,” Thornton said. “As Voyager Lunar Systems, we’ll continue building capabilities that advance both American leadership in space and our national interests.”<\/em><\/p>\n Voyager has pledged to invest in Astrobotic and its Pittsburgh facilities. “We’re going to be investing into the state of Pennsylvania, into Pittsburgh, to really help scale them up,” said Matthew Kuta, president of Voyager, describing plans to expand facilities and hire staff. The acquisition fits into a broader lunar initiative that includes a partnership with and investment in Max Space, a company developing inflatable habitats that could be used on the moon. Voyager has also developed a coating for materials to prevent the buildup of lunar dust.<\/p>\n Astrobotic’s capabilities extend beyond the moon. The company was one of seven selected by NASA on July 8th for awards through its Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration, or STRIDE, program to develop robotic mobility technologies for future Mars missions. The seven awards have a combined value of $17 million.<\/p>\n Voyager frames its space strategy as “LEO, Lunar, Lagrange,” representing low Earth orbit, the moon and beyond. “You can start to see where this is going, where it’s a broader lunar strategy,” Kuta said. “It’s really starting to come together.” Kuta said Voyager is also examining ways to use other Astrobotic capabilities, including the company’s work on a rotating-detonation rocket engine tested earlier this year at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and its suborbital technology testbeds. Voyager is working on propulsion for national security applications such as missile defense. “So, I think there’s going to be a lot of mutual synergies there as we continue to expand that business line,” he said.<\/p>\n The immediate milestones are Griffin-1’s environmental tests at JPL and a launch that could come as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, followed by the two Peregrine missions set for 2028. Voyager’s planned investment in the Pittsburgh facilities, including expansion and hiring, will unfold as the newly named Voyager Lunar Systems moves toward those launches.<\/p>\n Congratulations to all teams involved in this transaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The acquisition, first announced in early June, values Astrobotic at $162 million in cash and stock, but the deal also includes an additional $129 million in earnout payments contingent on meeting performance milestones, bringing the total consideration to just shy of $300 million. The closing follows a busy stretch for Astrobotic. The company shipped its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30514,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30500\/revisions\/30514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}