How it started
History
In 2007, the team declared its goal to be the first commercial operation to land on the Moon. That year, the company completed a running prototype of a spacecraft called Red Rover; they also renamed their concept lander from Artemis Lander to Griffin.
On July 28, 2008, NASA gave money to Astrobotic for a concept study on "regolith moving methods". The next year, Astrobotic began to receive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding from NASA totaling over US$795,000 to investigate prospecting for lunar resources, which eventually led to a concept called Polar Excavator.
On October 15, 2010, NASA awarded a contract to Astrobotic for Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) firm-fixed-price indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a total value up to US$30.1 million over up to five years, and in December 2010, NASA's US$500,000 ILDD project for further Lunar Demonstrations Data was awarded to Astrobotic.
Astrobotic's proposal "Technologies Enabling Exploration of Skylights, Lava Tubes, and Caves" was a Phase I selection for NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC). In April 2011, Astrobotic received a US$599,000 two-year contract to develop a scalable gravity offload device for testing rover mobility in simulated lunar gravity under NASA's Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR).
In May 2012, David Gump left the position of President of Astrobotic and John Thornton took his place.
From Wikipedia’s article on Astrobotic Technology, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3