Created: 2022-04-16
Updated: 2024-01-28
Company - Astrolab Venturi
Product/Service - FLEX
- Classification
- Surface Spacecraft
- Category
- Commercial Rover
- Fields
- Lunar Rover
Mars Rover
- Status
- Development
- First launch
- 2026
FLEX (Flexible Logistics and Exploration)
- FLEX's versatile design enables crew transport, last-mile cargo delivery, and adaptive utility in a single platform.
- FLEX is more than a concept. The company built a full-sized prototype of the rover and recently tested it near Death Valley, California. They simulated using the rover for a range of activities expected for a future lunar base, such as setting up solar arrays, as well as its ability to navigate terrain either with people onboard driving it or through teleoperation.
- ‘We want to be the UPS or FedEx of the moon’.
- Jaret Matthews, founder and chief executive of Astrolab, said in an interview that the mission, which will include 1,000 kilograms of customer payloads, will be the first flight of the FLEX rover. It will be a rideshare payload on a Starship mission landing somewhere in the south polar region of the moon.
- “Because our rover can traverse up to a couple thousand kilometers in a given year, we’re less sensitive to exactly where we land,” he said. “’It is definitely optimized for the south polar region because that’s fundamentally where we think that the bulk of the activity is going to be.”
- “[FLEX’s] versatility fundamentally comes from its modular payload concept,” Venturi Astrolab founder and CEO Jaret Matthews told Aviation Week at the Space Symposium. “Unlike rovers of the past, where they land with a fixed set of instruments and equipment that they have for the duration of life, FLEX has a modular payload concept that can have cargo or instruments come and go. And so over time, as new cargo is landed on the Moon, the idea is to serve as wide an array of use cases and customers as possible.”
- The FLEX is built around an inverted U-shaped chassis resembling a mobile cargo container crane. The vehicle frame provides 3 m3 (105 ft.3) of volume and can hold up to 1,500 kg. “You can fit about 30 of those on a single SpaceX Starship, so we’ve approached this problem the way you would approach supply chain logistics on Earth,” Matthews said. “In that system, you have big ships crossing the ocean, full of thousands of shipping containers. Then at the port you have trucks and trains to distribute cargo. We were inspired by that, and we’re taking an idea that works well on Earth and doing it on the Moon. For lunar logistics, we want to be the last-mile solution, but carrying crew is also one of the things that we want to do.”
Payloads to be Launched on Upcoming SpaceX Mission to the Moon, 2023-11-21
- Five customers are releasing details of their payloads today: Argo Space, Astroport, Avalon Space, Interstellar Lab, and LifeShip. Three more customers are contracted with Astrolab but intend to release details of their payloads at a future date, closer to launch. Collectively, these eight contracts are valued at more than $160 million.
- Argo Space Corp. (Argo) of Hermosa Beach, California intends to use FLEX to deploy a demonstration payload that will advance the development of Argo's unique, scalable technology designed to harvest low-concentration water from Lunar regolith. Argo’s novel processing approach will economically extract water outside of permanently shadowed regions (PSRs). This mission is a major step in the company’s efforts to use water from regolith for commercial applications to make in-space transportation abundant and build a Lunar economy. “We’re excited to work with Astrolab on this and future missions to catalyze a commercial Lunar economy and a sustained presence on the Moon,” said Robert Carlisle, CEO, Argo Space.
- Astroport Space Technologies of San Antonio, Texas builds infrastructure for the Moon, and intends to melt regolith to make bricks for roads, launch and landing pads, and shelters. To understand the properties of the regolith in the lunar environment, the payload will demonstrate a proof of concept for a proprietary sieving and grain separation technology that mitigates electrostatic forces inherent in the regolith. This technology will isolate the regolith grains that are ideal for manufacturing lunar bricks. FLEX’s robotic arm will collect regolith for the sieving and grain separation experiment. Separately, the Astroport payload also includes a limited number of personalized lunar simulant basalt bricks sold exclusively for placement on the lunar surface to mark the start of the first road on the Moon. “Our ideal customer for our personalized brick program is someone from an Artemis Accords signatory country who places an order for a brick to be made from the basalt soil of their respective country,” said Sam Ximenes, CEO, Astroport. FLEX will use its robotic arm to install these bricks to begin the construction of this initial lunar road.
- Avalon Space of Toronto will use FLEX to conduct a series of science, exploration and sustainable development experiments focused on the emerging lunar economy, leveraging a suite of both onboard and deployed elements on the lunar surface. “I don’t think anyone doubts that there will likely be a pre-Starship and post-Starship point in human history,” said Dr. Nadeem Ghafoor, CEO of Avalon Space. “We’re thrilled to be working with Astrolab and our international and commercial partners on this first mission to help unlock the potential of this new era of beyond-Earth orbit development. The next decade is going to change everything, and we’re looking forward to doing our part to help it be as peaceful, collaborative, impactful and economically significant as possible.”
- Interstellar Lab of Ivry-sur-Seine, France and Kennedy Space Center, Florida plans to use FLEX to deploy the two small plant pods on the lunar surface. Once deployed, Interstellar Lab will measure the impact of the lunar environment on the plant’s phenotype and molecular composition. "We are very excited to team up with Astrolab for our mission LITTLE PRINCE,” said Barbara Belvisi, founder and CEO, Interstellar Lab. “As Antoine Saint Exupéry wrote: "If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers." “This is the first of many Interstellar Lab missions,” Belvisi added. “We look forward to helping our terrestrial customers access Space and grow a garden on the Moon.”
- LifeShip, Inc. of San Diego, California intends to use FLEX to deliver a capsule containing a DNA seed bank and data archive to the lunar surface. LifeShip is saving the essence of Earth across space and time, with products for people to include themselves in the story. “This is an exciting mission! With LifeShip, anyone can be part of humanity's eternal legacy amongst the stars. People can add their DNA, photos, and stories at www.lifeship.com,” said Ben Haldeman, CEO, LifeShip. LifeShip is establishing a seed bank of Earth's biodiversity on the lunar surface. “Humans have built seed banks here on Earth for thousands of years. This will be an off-world backup of our biosphere,” Haldeman added.
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