“The company, formally known as Venturi Astrolab Inc., announced Nov. 21 that it signed the customers to fly payloads on Mission 1, a flight of the company’s Flexible Logistics and Exploration (FLEX) rover slated for as soon as mid-2026. Astrolab announced a contract with SpaceX in March to launch FLEX on that mission on a Starship commercial lander.”
I love their rover concept. That’s also a lot more customer money than I expected. From a risk standpoint, startups paying startups probably isn’t ideal? Hopefully enough of them make it to launch, Astrolab gets some NASA contracts, and they can start to become a sustainable little business.
As an aside, if this rover is going up at the same time as Artemis 3 in 2026, it’s frustrating that NASA isn’t flexible enough to use the crew variant until Artemis 5 in 2030. Give 4 more toys! Part of what bugs me with the Artemis timeline is how infrequent the launches will be and how slowly it climbs the tech tree.
