Our specialties in planetary exploration include robotic drilling, processing and sampling systems.
Created: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2025-09-06
Company - Honeybee Robotics (Blue Origin)
Product/Service - LUNARSABER
- Classification
- Space Utilities
- Category
- Resources - Energy
Space Robotics
- Fields
- Moon
- Status
- Development
- First launch
- Not announced
We have delivered systems for the last three of NASA’s Mars landers – including the first drill ever to look inside a rock on Mars, and the sample-handling robot inside the Mars Science Laboratory.
Honeybee Robotics, Inc., a passionate leader in technology and product development for advanced robotic and spacecraft systems, and innovative solar company, mPower Technology, Inc., announced today that the companies have been selected to provide an innovative lunar charging solution for NASA. The concept, called the Lunar Array Mast and Power System (LAMPS), will use some of the lightest solar panels ever made. LAMPS extends these solar panels to a height of two stories and unfolds another two-and-a-half stories of panel material using a patented, new deployable boom.
LUNARSABER
- The agency will award a total of $19.4 million to three companies to build prototypes and perform environmental testing, with the goal of deploying one of the systems near the Moon’s South Pole near the end of this decade.
- Honeybee Robotics of Brooklyn, New York: $7 million.
- A Lunar Electrical Grid on Celestial Citizen podcast. We’re joined by Hunter Williams to talk about a new concept for a lunar electrical grid and explore the various infrastructure, technical, and policy considerations that will be needed to enable lunar surface activities.
DARPA LunA-10 Program Study, 2023-2024
2023-12-05, Honeybee Robotics has been selected for DARPA’s 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study to develop and integrate its technology LUNARSABER (Lunar Utility Navigation with Advanced Remote Sensing and Autonomous Beaming for Energy Redistribution).
- Proposed at over 100 meters tall, Honeybee’s LUNARSABER is a deployable structure that integrates solar power, power storage and transfer, communications, mesh network, PNT (Position, Navigation, and Timing), and surveillance into a single infrastructure. The deployable mast uses the Honeybee technology DIABLO (Deployable Interlocking Actuated Bands for Linear Operations), making it highly versatile and customizable to customer or mission requirements.
- The infrastructure would literally shine light on new possibilities, increasing operating hours for human and robotic missions on the Moon. “LUNARSABER can turn night into day in the deepest craters on the Moon,” says Kris Zacny, VP of Exploration Systems at Honeybee Robotics. “It is truly a game-changing system that will pave the way for a prosperous lunar economy.”
Robotic ISRU Construction of Planetary Landing and Launch Pad, 2016 STTR Phase I
Planetary Volatiles Extractor for In-Situ Resource Utilization, 2015 SBIR Phase II
The World is Not Enough (WINE): Harvesting Local Resources for Eternal Exploration of Space, 2015 SBIR Phase II
Notes
Product/Service
- Classification
- Surface Spacecraft
- Category
- Commercial Rover
- Fields
- Lunar Rover
- Status
- Development
- First launch
- 2028
- Firefly Aerospace and Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, today announced Honeybee was contracted by Firefly to provide the lunar rover for the company’s recently awarded NASA task order to explore the Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon’s near side in 2028.
- Once deployed on the Moon by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander, Honeybee’s rover will carry NASA instruments to investigate the unique composition of the Gruithuisen Domes.
- Honeybee’s rover will help investigate the subsurface composition of the Gruithuisen Gamma Dome carrying elements of NASA’s Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE) suite.
- The rover will travel along the southern edge of the Gruithuisen Gamma Dome and through a boulder field to reach the rim of a recent impact crater. The rover will then traverse back to the lander just before sunset to enable repeat observations of boulder targets at different solar illumination angles.
NASA Invests in Artemis Studies to Support Long-Term Lunar Exploration, 2025-01-23.
- NASA awarded new study contracts Thursday to help support life and work on the lunar surface.
- The Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships Appendix R contracts will advance learning in managing everyday challenges in the lunar environment identified in the agency’s Moon to Mars architecture.
- The selected proposals have a combined value of $24 million, spread across multiple companies, and propose innovative strategies and concepts for logistics and mobility solutions including advanced robotics and autonomous capabilities.
- Blue Origin, Merritt Island, Florida – logistical carriers; logistics handling and offloading; logistics transfer; staging, storage, and tracking; surface cargo and mobility; and integrated strategies.
Created: 2025-08-09
Updated: 2025-09-06
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