Members of the small business Starpath remotely operate the rover and run data in preparation for its entrance to the V20 Thermal Vacuum Chamber at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, on July 30, 2025. 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. Their 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. The 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. For more information, contact NASA Marshall’s Office of Communications at 256-544-0034.