Masten Wins SFF’s Vision to Reality Award

Masten's Xoie lunar lander after an attempt at the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. There was damage to the lander from a fire.

Masten Space Systems will receive the Space Frontier Foundation’s 2010 “Vision to Reality” Award in recognition of the company winning the 2009 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge last year. SFF will present the award to the Mojave, Calif.-based company during a gala dinner at the NewSpace 2010 Conference in Sunnyvale, Calif. from July 23-25.

“Masten’s flight was the culmination of a close race for the prize between them and Armadillo Aerospace, and we expect to see both companies doing great things in the future,” said SFF Chairman Bob Werb. “Masten’s precision lunar flight demonstration shows we can do amazing things at low cost outside of the government, do them quickly, and do them right.”

SFF says that Masten pulled out a narrow victory over NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) project, which helped to confirm water on the moon last year.

“Sometimes progress forward is imperceivable to the public eye, then all within one year we have several great contenders achieving breakthroughs,” said SFF Executive Director, William Watson. “Besides Masten’s accomplishment, NASA’s lunar team really expanded our knowledge base of the resources necessary to live and work on the Moon, and SpaceX keeps doing great things to open the space frontier.”

Previous winners have included: SpaceX, Scaled Composites, Space Adventures, Celestis, SpaceHab, XCOR Aerospace, Clementine Lunar Orbiter team, International Space University, and space tourist Dennis Tito.