Honeybee Robotics x NASA (Mars Sample Return)

Honeybee Robotics, LLC is an American space robotics company headquartered in Longmont, Colorado, with additional facilities in Altadena, California and Greenbelt, Maryland. Founded in 1983 by Steve Gorevan and Chris Chapman, the company designs and builds robotic drilling, sampling, and manipulation systems for planetary exploration, with hardware on every successful NASA Mars rover mission since Spirit and Opportunity. The company built the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the Mars Exploration Rovers, the Sample Manipulation System and Dust Removal Tool on Curiosity, and the Phoenix Scoop on the 2008 Phoenix Lander. Acquired by Ensign-Bickford Industries in 2017, then sold to Blue Origin in January 2022, Honeybee is now a Blue Origin subsidiary with ~284 employees and ~$75M revenue. The company has launched over 3,000 components and systems to space, with current missions including NASA's VIPER lunar rover, Mars Sample Return, JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX), and [Dragonfly](/companies/dragonfly-ai) to Titan.

NASA ([National aeronautics and space administration](/companies/national-aeronautics-and-space-administration)) is the U.S. government agency responsible for civilian space exploration, aeronautics, and aerospace research. NASA funds autonomous systems, robotics, and physical AI through SBIR/STTR programs, and operates the Mars rovers and other autonomous space systems.