Spun-out of Carnegie Mellon, Astrobotic Technology is developing space robotics technology for planetary mission. The firm was originally founded to compete for Google Lunar X Prize. Partnering with Carnegie Mellon University, International Rectifier, Ansys, AGI, Alcoa, Caterpillar and others, the team planned to be among the first to land their spacecraft on the Moon. Since its formation, Astrobotic has maintained a spot in the top three rankings for Evadot's third-party Google Lunar X Prize Scorecard. The company's first running prototype of Red Rover was completed the same year, and in July 2008, NASA awarded Astrobotic funding for its "Regolith Moving Methods" proposal. In addition to their SBIR awards,, 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 $30.1 million over a period of up to five years, and a $500,000 ILDD project for further Lunar Demonstrations Data was awarded to Astrobotic. In 2014 Astrobotic Technologies was one of three companies selected for Lunar CATALYST initiative. As part of the effort to achieve a lunar landing and rover mission to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE and deliver commercial payload, Astrobotic contracted with SpaceX for a Falcon 9 launch on a lunar mission intended to "deliver a lander, small rover and up to about 240 pounds (110 kg) of payload to the surface of the Moon. The 2015 mission -- named Polar Excavator (now Icebreaker), targeted the lunar north pole, was rescheduled but in 2016, Astrobotic contracted with two other GLXP teams including Team Hakuto and Team AngelicvM. The agreement is to launch the rovers of all teams on a single SpaceX Falcon 9 which would then use the Astrobotic Griffin lander to touch down on the surface of the Moon. After landing on the lunar surface, all teams will compete against each other to achieve the objectives and win the GLXP prize --now planned for late 2017
