HELSINKI & LOS ANGELES, April 14, 2022 (TransAstra PR) –TransAstra, a provider of breakthrough orbital logistics and space domain awareness solutions, and ReOrbit, a provider of software-defined small satellites for beyond LEO missions, announced today that they have signed binding contracts for initial spacecraft development and orbital logistics services.

Under these contracts, TransAstra will provide mission definition and engineering analysis for TransAstra’s Worker Bee™ orbital transfer vehicles to deliver ReOrbit’s customer satellites to Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit, Geostationary Orbit, and Cis-Lunar orbits. In addition, ReOrbit will provide development options under which ReOrbit generates cost, feasibility, and integration considerations to complete the production and testing of Worker Bee. Under a separate Memorandum of Agreement, TransAstra will explore selecting ReOrbit as a preferred provider of microsats and smallsats for certain customer payloads, while ReOrbit will explore selecting TransAstra’s Worker Bee as the preferred supplier of orbital transport vehicle services, including satellite delivery and hosting.

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase II Award
Amount: $500,000

Lunar Polar Propellant Mining Outpost (LPMO): A Breakthrough for Lunar Exploration & Industry

Joel Sercel
Trans Astronautica Corporation

The Lunar Polar Mining Outpost (LPMO) (see quad chart graphic) is a breakthrough mission architecture that promises to greatly reduce the cost of human exploration and industrialization of the Moon.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program has made the following awards for 2020.

PHASE I

Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay
Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory     
Pasadena, CA

John Christian
StarNAV: An Architecture for Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation by the Relativistic Perturbation of Starlight
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute     
Troy, NY

Illustration of the Skylight mission concept, a 2019 NIAC Phase III. (Credits: William Whittaker, Carnegie Mellon University)

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — Robotically surveying lunar craters in record time and mining resources in space could help NASA establish a sustained human presence at the Moon – part of the agency’s broader Moon to Mars exploration approach. Two mission concepts to explore these capabilities have been selected as the first-ever Phase III studies within the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

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Lunar-Polar Propellant Mining Outpost (Credit: Joel Sercel)

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program
Phase I Award: Up to $125,000 for 9 Months

Lunar-Polar Propellant Mining Outpost (LPMO): Affordable Exploration and Industrialization
Joel Sercel
TransAstra Corporation

The Lunar Polar Gas-Dynamic Mining Outpost (LGMO) (see quad chart graphic) is a breakthrough mission architecture that promises to greatly reduce the cost of human exploration and industrialization of the Moon. LGMO is based on two new innovations that together solve the problem of affordable lunar polar ice mining for propellant production.

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