Starpath employs $12 million in startup money to speed up plans for moon water mining

NASA and the space industry agree that using every available natural resource is essential to establishing a long-term human presence on the moon, with water ice being the most significant. Just a few startups are preparing for this future, including Starpath Robotics.

The company is making the assumption that there will be a robust market for liquid oxygen (LOX), which is produced by refining lunar water ice, and that obtaining this resource would be essential to human development across the solar system.

CEO Saurav Shroff recently stated in an interview that Starpath aims to begin a demo mission "as quickly as we possibly can." The firm announced today that it has closed a $12 million seed round, co-led by 8VC and Fusion Fund, with participation from Day One Ventures, Balerion Space, and Indicator Ventures, to ensure the hardware will be ready whenever a launch vehicle is available.

With this latest funding, nearly $14.5 million has been raised in total. Since Starpath first revealed its ideas last year, a large portion of the architecture has not changed. Basically, the business intends to utilize fleets of mining rovers to remove hundreds of tons of lunar dirt and then send it back to autonomous lunar processing plans so that the water can be extracted.

The 10-person team, according to Shroff, has improved the mining rover hardware to the point that many fewer rovers would be needed to create a 1,000-ton yearly harvesting scale (the business had previously anticipated that 50 rovers would be needed to hit that rate).

As part of NASA's Break the Ice challenge to the private sector, the space agency awarded $800,000 in funds to advance rover development. The solar array and refinery are only two examples of the many things that still need to be developed, but the fundamental architecture is practically set in stone.

According to Shroff, the business is just swapping out its dirt-hauling rover with one that can transport pressurized cryogenic propellant tanks. He also stated that the rover will be outfitted with a customized refueling device, which will probably be created for each customer individually, though he would not provide specifics.