Team Puli Space is the Third Google Lunar XPRIZE Team to Reserve a Ride to the Moon with Astrobotic

Tel Aviv / Pittsburgh / Budapest– Astrobotic Technology, Inc. and Puli Space Technologies Ltd. announced today at the Google Lunar XPRIZE (GLXP) Summit in Tel Aviv, Israel that they have signed an agreement to fly the first Hungarian payload to the Moon on Astrobotic’s upcoming first mission. The Hungarian team, Puli Space, joins fellow GLXP Teams HAKUTO from Japan, and AngelicvM from Chile, in reserving a ride to the surface of the Moon on Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander with a “Memory of Mankind (MoM) on the Moon” time capsule and an option to add their rover. This new partnership with Team Puli further extends Astrobotic’s mission of making the Moon accessible to the world by adding a seventh nation to be represented on their inaugural flight.

With this payload reservation, Puli Space will send a unique time capsule for the MoM on the Moon project. The capsule will hold ceramic tablets containing archival imagery and texts of up to 5 million characters per tablet, readable with a 10x magnifier.

“To fly with Astrobotic to the Moon is a unique opportunity for our team to set another exceptional mark in the long success story of Hungarian scientific and technical achievements,” explained Dr. Tibor Pacher, Puli Space’s founder and CEO. “We are extremely proud to participate in this historical mission, and with this Moonshot I believe we shall offer another great example that Hungarian engineers and scientists can compete with anyone anywhere in the world.”

“We are very excited to welcome Team Puli to join us on our mission,” said Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton. “With this agreement, our upcoming mission will triple the number of nations that will have landed on the Moon, making this truly an international endeavor of historic proportions.”

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About Astrobotic:
Astrobotic Technology is a lunar logistics company that delivers payloads to the Moon for companies, governments, universities, nonprofits, and individuals. Earlier this year, the company unveiled their newly designed Peregrine lander, which accommodates multiple customers on a single flight, offering lunar delivery at an industry-defining price of $1.2 Million per kilogram. Astrobotic recently announced both DHL as their official logistics partner and a partnership with Airbus to provide technical support in the design of the Peregrine lander. Additionally, Astrobotic is a partner with NASA through a Space Act Agreement under the Lunar CATALYST program, and has 21 prior and ongoing NASA contracts. The company has 10 deals in place for its first mission and dozens of customer negotiations for upcoming missions. The company is also pursuing the Google Lunar XPRIZE with partner Carnegie Mellon University. Astrobotic was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in 2007, and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.

About Puli Space:
Budapest based Puli Space Technologies is a dedicated team of Hungarian professionals and space enthusiasts, named after the Puli, a dog-breed long used by shepherds for the protection and guidance of livestock in Hungary. Pulis are revered for their extraordinary intelligence, obedience and playful temperament. Team Puli is an official Google Lunar XPRIZE contestant, and concentrates on the development of an affordable lightweight planetary rover platform, with a close look on down-to-earth applications like landmine detection, and will catapult Hungary to the Moon. With its unique wheel-leg (wheg) based mobility concept, Puli’s robust and simple rover design is capable of negotiating rough terrains under extreme conditions. The team tested this design successfully in various Lunar Analogue Sites in the Moroccan desert, on the slopes of the Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii and on a rock glacier in the Alps, and Puli is ready to explore the Moon on Fellow Google Lunar XPRIZE contestant Astrobotic’s maiden lunar mission. Puli Space also considers it a top priority to promote scientific thinking and to encourage students in choosing a career in science.

About MoM on the Moon:
MoM – Memory of Mankind is the largest time capsule of mankind, preserving a picture of our time for future generations. MOM will provide a testimony to our lives and to the time in which we live. For this, ceramic tablets with texts and images are stored in a salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria. In the “MoM on the Moon” project, Puli aims to send up to six special MoM ceramic tablets to the Moon as a Payload of the Puli rover. This is a joint project of Memory of Mankind and Puli, led by Puli Space.