As development of SpaceX's mega rocket system Starship progresses, some

companies are preparing for the future it will bring.

I think our our rover will be the first large scale one on the surface and it's the scale of an

SUV the whole starting premise of the company was to build the biggest thing we could pass through the

Starship door to really maximize the capability that you can get out of these systems.

Jarrett Matthews started Astrolab in 2020 after working at SpaceX on the Dragon program and then Starship.

Venturi AstroLab, as it's formally called,

is building rovers for the moon.

So Flex is really designed to handle the first problem first, which is the last mile problem.

So if you have one of these landers like Starship landing on the moon with 100 tons of cargo,

Flex is designed to take that cargo out of the lander,

get it delivered the last mile,

get it connected, set up, maintained, etc.

But it's also designed to and we're working on the infrastructure to ultimately power the

lunar economy.

The startup was recently selected by NASA, one of three companies tasked with designing the lunar terrain vehicle.

The LTV competition will result in a single company making the rover Artemis astronauts

will use to drive around the Moon's southern polar region, starting as soon as 2030.

But AstroLab has plans to go sooner.

Its first mission, a fully robotic one, is targeting 2026, and its flexible logistics and exploration rover Flex and its

commercial payloads will travel there via Starship. I'm Morgan Brennan and

this is Manifest Space. Joining me now, Jared Matthews,

...