Lunar Challenge Winner Tests Technology in NASA Thermal Vacuum Chamber

Employees from Environmental Test Facility at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, work with the Starpath team on July 30, 2025, to carefully maneuver the rover onto a platform that will slide the rover into the chamber. 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.