TransAstra is a space infrastructure and logistics company focused on enabling asteroid mining and sustainable space operations. They are developing technologies for detecting, capturing, moving, and processing space resources, including asteroid mining and orbital debris removal. TransAstra's key products include the Sutter Telescope system for asteroid detection, the Capture Bag for securing asteroids and orbital debris, and the Worker Bee orbital transfer vehicle. They have partnerships with organizations like NASA, Space Force, Celestron and ReOrbit.
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TransAstra designs capture bags intended to retrieve cubesats and to envelop spent rocket bodies, defunct geostationary communications satellites, or 50,000-ton asteroids.
The NASA contract awarded to TransAstra is a Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research contract worth $850,000.
TransAstra built a small capture bag in 2021 with funding from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts program.
The TransAstra contract was awarded through NASA’s SBIR Ignite program, which supports early-stage technology with potential commercial applications.
TransAstra Corporation was awarded a Phase One Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the United States Space Force to explore new applications for the company's Omnivore™ thruster.
TransAstra has completed successful tests of the Omnivore™ propulsion system at its Los Angeles facility using a variety of propellants.
The combined TransAstra and Slooh observatory locations will provide students with 24-hour coverage of the night sky.
TransAstra entered a partnership with online astronomy platform Slooh on 2022-08-09 to offer U.S. schools access to a global network of ground-based and space-based telescopes.
TransAstra operates a second Sutter telescope at the Sierra Remote Observatory in California.
Under the contracts, TransAstra will provide mission definition and engineering analysis for TransAstra’s Worker Bee™ orbital transfer vehicles to deliver ReOrbit’s customer satellites to LEO, MEO, GEO, and cislunar orbits.
Under the contracts, ReOrbit will provide development options that generate cost, feasibility, and integration considerations to complete the production and testing of TransAstra’s Worker Bee™.
Worker Bee spacecraft are part of TransAstra’s Apis family of flight systems, which includes a 250-kilogram Mini Bee technology demonstrator and larger Honey Bee and Queen Bee spacecraft designed to harvest propellant from asteroids.