NASA test engineers with the Environmental Test Facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center situate the rover over the concrete slab that it will operate on before removing the suspension straps that lifted it onto the platform. The technology startup headquartered in Hawthorne, California, won second place overall at the agency’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge’s live demonstration and finale in June 2024. This competition, one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, tasked competitors to design, build, and demonstrate robotic technologies that could excavate and transport the icy, rocky dirt – otherwise known as regolith – found on the Moon. Starpath’s visit to NASA Marshall was part of their prize opportunity to test their upgraded lunar regolith excavation and transportation rover in the center’s 20-foot thermal vacuum chamber. For more information, contact NASA Marshall’s Office of Communications at 256-544-0034.