Griffin-1 is the follow up to Astrobotic’s first lunar landing attempt, Peregrine-1, which launched in January 2024. That lander encountered a helium valve issue early in flight that prevented a landing attempt. CEO John Thornton said the company’s in-house avionics and other systems performed as expected on that flight, and a post-anomaly review board worked through the fault tree and potential links to future Griffin landers.<\/p>\n
The Griffin concept has been in Astrobotic’s development pipeline for nearly two decades, going back close to the company’s founding. Thornton said the new lander incorporates all of the lessons learned from Peregrine, including a dual redundant valve system using two dissimilar valves that both would have to fail to produce the same outcome. “We are done with valve issues on our landers,” he said. He added that an exhaustive failure review board examined not only the known fault but other potential risks, and that all those loops have been closed.<\/p>\n
Dozens gathered at the Moonshot Museum, adjacent to Astrobotic’s facilities, which features a window into the cleanroom for public viewing. Carlos Garc\u00eda-Gal\u00e1n, NASA’s Program Executive for the Moon Base, said the mission is a crucial stepping stone as the agency learns what will be needed for permanent infrastructure at the Moon’s south pole. He and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman previously pointed to Griffin-1 as a foundational flight for the program. “It’s carrying new technologies that will help us understand how to do these things, like landing on the Moon successfully, reliably, and deploying rovers,” Garc\u00eda-Gal\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n
The main payload is Astrolab’s FLIP, the FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform rover, which will meet the lander at Cape Canaveral for integration in the final weeks before launch. FLIP was designed in about 18 months after NASA temporarily cancelled its VIPER mission in July 2024, opening a slot on Griffin-1. It serves as a pathfinder for technology Astrolab will use on its Crewed Lunar Vehicle, CLV-1, and its Flexible Logistics and Exploration vehicle, FLEX. Kelly Randell, Astrolab’s Business Development Manager, said the mission would further technologies for the company’s lunar terrain vehicle, “which hopefully will have astronauts driving it in the very near future.”<\/p>\n
Garc\u00eda-Gal\u00e1n said the mission is more than carrying payloads, describing it as a cornerstone for setting the cadence NASA needs to build permanent lunar infrastructure. Thornton framed the unveiling as evidence of Pittsburgh’s place in spaceflight. “Pittsburgh is in the space race,” he said. Last week, Astrobotic announced it is being acquired by Voyager Technologies. Matt Maga\u00f1a, Voyager’s President of Defense and National Security, called Griffin-1 “only the beginning” and pointed to plans to scale the company toward placing a habitat on the lunar surface.<\/p>\n
Griffin-1 next heads to JPL for environmental testing later this month. FLIP is undergoing its own environmental tests and checkouts after completing payload integration and will be integrated with the lander at Cape Canaveral in the final weeks before launch. A specific launch date has not been announced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Griffin-1 is the follow up to Astrobotic’s first lunar landing attempt, Peregrine-1, which launched in January 2024. That lander encountered a helium valve issue early in flight that prevented a landing attempt. CEO John Thornton said the company’s in-house avionics and other systems performed as expected on that flight, and a post-anomaly review board worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4786,"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-4734","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\/4734"}],"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=4734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4787,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4734\/revisions\/4787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}