Break the Ice Winner Starpath Robot Tests at NASA Marshall Thermal Vacuum Chamber

By Savannah Bullard

A year after winning second place in the Break The Ice Lunar challenge of NASA, the members of the Small Business Starpath visited the Marshall Space Flight Center of NASA in Huntsville, in Alabama, as part of their price opportunity to test their 20 -foot lunar excavation and transport in the 20 -foot vacuum room.

The technological startup whose headquarters are in Hawthorne, California, won second place in the general classification during the live demonstration and the Break The Ice Lunar Challenge final in June 2024. This competition, one of the challenges of the Centenary of NASA, instructed competitors to design, build and demonstrate robotic technologies Icy, rocky dirt – otherwise known as Régolith – found on the moon.

“The challenges of NASA centenary are a great way to discover new innovative technologies, including those for future use on the moon and even March,” said Naveen Vetcha, Breaking the Ice Lunar Challenge Manager at Nasa Marshall. “Working with the winners after the end of the challenge is a perfect example of how we can use NASA facilities to continue to advance these technologies to generate valuable solutions for the agency and industry.”

Starpath has built a four -wheeled rover capable of searching, collecting and transporting equipment under extremely difficult environmental conditions that simulate the lunar South pole. On the rover, a double drum barrel can extend from the robot body – imitating a movement similar to the claws of a crab – and scratch in rough and hard regolith to quickly excavate equipment without compromising the lifespan of the finished battery.

Before Starpath made the 2000 miles of California at Alabama this summer, the staff of the NASA Marshall engineering test installations prepared a concrete slab equipped with rocky land to act like a test bench for the robot to interact inside the room. The V-20 thermal vacuum room, located in the installation of Marshall’s environmental test, can simulate hard environments by handling the vacuum, temperature, humidity and the pressure effects of the room. Starpath staff spent about three days at NASA Marshall in August, testing their robot with excavation and mobility tests while collecting data on their performance.

The Starpath team is improving the development of its technology for missions located in the permanently shaded regions of the South Lunar pole. As a future landing site for NASA Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the moon and prepare to send the first Americans to Mars, the region of the southern pole of the moon is known to contain ice in its regolith. It was the main inspiration behind the development of the lunar challenge of the rupture, because NASA will require robust technologies that can dig and transport lunar ice for extraction, purification and use as drinking water or rocket fuel.

The Break The Ice Lunar challenge of NASA was a challenge to the centenary of NASA which took place from 2020 to 2024. The challenge was led by the Marshall Space Flight Center of the agency with the support of the Kennedy Space Center of NASA in Florida. Centennial challenges are part of the price, challenges and crowdsourcing program as part of the NASA space technology mission.

For more information on the challenge and its conclusion, visit:

nasa.gov/winit