When the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander is launched to the Moon, its commercial payloads will include two technologies that were advanced by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program: the Automated Radiation Measurement for Aerospace Safety, known as ARMAS, and a miniature rover called the AstroAnt. During Intuitive Machines’ second lunar delivery under NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, these two innovations will carry out tasks that hold promise for better protecting people and equipment as we venture farther and stay longer in space.
 
Both ARMAS (developed by Space Environment Technologies of Pacific Palisades, California) and AstroAnt (developed by MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]) benefitted from testing through Flight Opportunities. With high-altitude balloons, 10-minute suborbital trips to space, and parabolic flights simulating a variety of gravity environments, Flight Opportunities testing helped take these innovations to their next level of maturity and demonstrated their readiness to go to the Moon. Continue reading to learn more about these technologies and their growth through Flight Opportunities.

With Flight Opportunities testing and support, research teams have advanced the ARMAS sensor’s readiness to obtain radiation monitoring data during a lunar mission as well as in a commercial product here on Earth.
 
The ARMAS system monitors radiation in real time for long durations, providing data that can help protect both people and sensitive equipment. During the IM-2 mission, the lightweight ARMAS sensor will measure radiation both en route to the Moon and on the lunar surface as part of the Freedom payload from Lonestar Data Holdings of St. Petersburg, Florida.
 
In addition to funding received from NASA’s SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program and Center Innovation Fund, testing with Flight Opportunities provided important lessons to advance ARMAS’s development. Multiple high-altitude balloon tests with Tuscon, Arizona-based World View Enterprises, including a month-long flight in 2024 where ARMAS performed radiation monitoring around the clock at aviation altitudes, helped researchers both demonstrate the sensor’s capabilities and identify areas for refinement. ARMAS also took flight beyond the aviation environment aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket system. The Blue Origin flights helped ready ARMAS to provide radiation measurements from outside the International Space Station in 2022.
 
The ARMAS technology has also launched into the commercial market, where it will fly as part of the Virgin Galactic Delta fleet and has conducted monitoring on some commercial airline flights — the type that millions of people take every day here on Earth. By helping us better understand radiation exposure on suborbital and aviation flights, ARMAS could help reduce flight crews’ risk for certain types of cancer that may be linked to radiation exposure.

The AstroAnt began with an idea inspired by science fiction and became real through construction in a laboratory. By testing with Flight Opportunities, AstroAnt demonstrated its readiness to roll out of the laboratory and onto a rover on the Moon as well as in the commercial market.

The AstroAnt is a miniature robot resembling a high-tech toy car that fits in the palm of your hand. On the IM-2 mission, it will begin its work when the rover from Arvada, Colorado–based Lunar Outpost rolls out of the lander and onto the lunar surface. There, an AstroAnt will move across the top surface of the rover, making contact-less temperature measurements of the rover’s radiator — one of its most crucial systems. These data will help with monitoring the rover’s thermal system and can be used to inform NASA’s Artemis III crewed mission.

Flight Opportunities enabled testing of AstroAnt in 2021 in simulated lunar, Martian, and microgravity aboard a Zero Gravity Corporation aircraft flying up-and-down maneuvers called parabolas. In these reduced gravity environments, MIT researchers demonstrated rapid robot mobility and controlled traction for lunar spacecraft diagnostics and servicing.

In addition to the specific job on this mission, AstroAnt is marching ahead with efforts to provide diagnostics and service in the commercial market here on Earth. Using lessons and technologies from AstroAnt, the MIT researchers have launched a spinout company to provide scalable systems that coordinate robotic activities in a safe and secure manner for commercial use.