Astrobotic Delivers CubeRover to NASA for Testing Carnegie Mellon Co-Developed Small, Light Robot

Byron SpiceWednesday, October 7, 2020

Astrobotic has delivered its CubeRover to NASA's Kennedy Space Center for tests as it preps for a 2021 mission.

The Pittsburgh space robotics company Astrobotic has delivered its CubeRover to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the robot will undergo a battery of mobility and drop tests in a simulated lunar terrain.

Co-developed by Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University with input from a NASA Kennedy team, CubeRover is a small, light robotic rover designed as an affordable mobile platform for scientific instruments and other payloads to operate on the surface of the moon.

"Because our CubeRover is so light — in the four-kilogram range — it dramatically reduces flight cost, making the moon more accessible to more customers," said Mike Provenzano, Astrobotic's director of planetary mobility.

CubeRover is a commercial version of Iris, a CMU-built rover scheduled to land on the moon as early as next summer.

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Byron Spice | 412-268-9068 | bspice@cs.cmu.edu