Meet the Phase 1 winners of NASA TechLeap Prize’s Robotically Manipulated Payload Challenge.

To achieve ambitious visions for expansion and opportunity, the space industry will need equally ambitious experiments that advance the state of the art and show what’s possible. And finding ways to build, maintain, and upgrade in-space infrastructure will help make the growing space economy more resilient and sustainable.

Earlier this year, NASA Flight Opportunities launched the Robotically Manipulated Payload Challenge, part of the NASA TechLeap Prize series, to advance persistent infrastructure for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM). The challenge, designed and administered by Luminary Labs, invited applicants to propose payloads that can be manipulated by a robotic arm in low Earth orbit.

This month, NASA announced the Phase 1 winners. These teams received $200,000 each and advanced to Phase 2:

• General Galactic Technologies Corporation — Theseus Experimental Project. Theseus is a modular refuellable propulsion demonstration project. The modular propulsion payload runs entirely on water and carries a replaceable tank rather than a fixed propellant load. This allows spacecraft to be refueled, extending missions with refueling or a tank swap instead of requiring a new vehicle. A robotic arm will manage the operation: transferring the modular unit from the delivery vehicle to the host spacecraft, orienting for thruster operations, and then swapping out the water tank when it is time to refuel.
• Falcon ExoDynamics — Stowable Mobile Inspection Kit for Close Inspection Operations. Falcon ExoDynamics’ stowable mobile inspection kit features its multi-spectral sensor. Mounted on a bracket designed for a robotic arm, the sensor includes multiple cameras and sensors to support inspection operations. Once deployed, the robotic arm will use the kit as a movable sensor package to inspect the host spacecraft, its solar arrays, and the departing delivery vehicle.
• SpaceWorks Enterprises, Inc. — PECAN: Power and Edge-Compute Augmentation Node. SpaceWorks’ PECAN is a roughly 12U module that carries power, compute, and fluid. A robotic arm will grapple PECAN from its delivery vehicle and berth it on the host spacecraft’s deck using the FuseBlox interface, where a single mating plane connects mechanical, power, data, and fluid interfaces between the two spacecraft. With most spacecraft capabilities currently fixed at launch, PECAN is intended to demonstrate foundational interfaces that could scale to future in-space assembly, aggregation, and augmentation of large space systems, and to gather operational lessons that inform their development.

Phase 2 kicked off Oct. 8 and runs through January. Now, teams are finalizing their designs and building their payloads with the support of NASA subject matter experts. At the end of the phase, field judges will conduct site visits to evaluate each team’s progress, and winners will have the opportunity to receive an additional award of $200,000 each and advance to Phase 3. During Phase 3, winners will compete for an additional award of $100,000 each. NASA intends to offer each Phase 3 winner an opportunity for a flight test aboard a hosted orbital spacecraft at no cost.

Learn more about the winners on the challenge website.