Honeybee Robotics
Space robotics and mechanisms company (Altadena, California and Longmont, Colorado) that builds sampling and drilling hardware, including NASA's TRIDENT drill (flown in PRIME-1 on IM-2 and integrated on VIPER) and Lunar PlanetVac (operated on Blue Ghost Mission 1). It has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Origin since 2022.
Resources and evidence
Each resource shows the highest step primary sources support. How the ladder works.
| Resource | Evidence | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Regolith | Sampled | material collected |
| Water ice | Targeted | mission aimed at it |
| Volatiles | Targeted | mission aimed at it |
Demonstrated
Lunar PlanetVac, a NASA CLPS payload, collected, transferred and sorted lunar soil at Mare Crisium on Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 (March 2025), per NASA. The TRIDENT drill in NASA's PRIME-1 suite on Intuitive Machines' IM-2 (March 2025) completed its range-of-motion checks, but NASA says the lander came to rest on its side, preventing full drill operation; the gases MSOLO detected were judged anthropogenic, so no lunar ice measurement was made. Honeybee also built the P-Sampler pneumatic sampler for JAXA's Phobos sample-return mission (shipped 2023).
Claimed or planned
TRIDENT is integrated on NASA's VIPER rover, which NASA plans to deliver to the lunar South Pole in late 2027 on Blue Origin's Blue Moon MK1. NASA describes PlanetVac-type sampling as technology that 'could benefit the search for water, helium, and other resources'. None of this is resource extraction.
Facts
- Headquarters
- United States
- Type
- Company
- Founded
- 1983
- Status
- Active (subsidiary)as of 2025-03-24. Operating under its own name as a Blue Origin subsidiary: Firefly release of 2025-03-24 announces a contract with 'Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company'; NASA pages through 2025 use the same wording. The acquisition was announced 2022-01-24 (Blue Origin page).
- Roles
- Instrument / drill
- Targets
- Moon
- Parent
- Blue Origin
- Also known as
- Honeybee Robotics, Ltd.; Honeybee Robotics, Inc.; Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company
- Website
- www.honeybeerobotics.com
Missions
2 records| Mission | Role | Launch | Phase | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 (Ghost Riders in the Sky)Spacecraft | Payload builder | 2025-01-15 | Ended | Success |
| PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1)Payload | Payload builder | 2025-02-26 | Ended | Partial |
Dated events
Amounts are shown one at a time as each source states them. They are never added together.
- 2023-12-05
DARPA selects Helios for the LunA-10 lunar architecture study
DARPA listed Helios among 14 companies selected for its LunA-10 capability study on integrated lunar infrastructure, which DARPA says does not fund hardware construction or transport to the Moon; Firefly Aerospace, Honeybee Robotics and Blue Origin were also selected.
Sources (2) and evidence gaps
DARPA has selected the following companies for LunA-10: Blue Origin CisLunar Industries Crescent Space Services LLC Fibertek, Inc. Firefly Aerospace GITAI Helios Honeybee Robotics ICON
LunA-10 will not fund technology construction, transportation to the lunar surface, or integration with lunar delivery vehicles
- Award value per performer not stated.
- 2022-01-24
Blue Origin agrees to acquire Honeybee Robotics
Blue Origin agreed to acquire Honeybee Robotics from Ensign-Bickford Industries, making it a wholly owned subsidiary; the deal was expected to close in mid-February 2022 and terms were not disclosed.
Company announcement. No counterparty or government record found.
Sources (2) and evidence gaps
The deal between Honeybee's parent organization, Ensign-Bickford Industries, and Blue Origin is expected to close in mid-February. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
Honeybee will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Origin, headquartered in Kent, Washington.
- Closing not confirmed by a primary source; date is the announcement date
- 2019-07-01
NASA selects Honeybee's PlanetVac for a CLPS flight
NASA selected PlanetVac (principal investigator Kris Zacny, Honeybee Robotics), a technology to acquire and transfer lunar regolith, among 12 lunar science and technology investigations for CLPS flights; it later flew as Lunar PlanetVac on Blue Ghost Mission 1.
Sources (2)
PlanetVac is a technology for acquiring and transferring lunar regolith from the surface to other instruments that would analyze the material, or put it in a container that another spacecraft could return to Earth. The principal investigator is Kris Zacny of Honeybee Robotics
Lunar PlanetVac (LPV) was deployed on Blue Ghost’s surface access arm and successfully collected, transferred, and sorted lunar soil
Open evidence gaps
- Closing date of the Blue Origin acquisition not confirmed by a primary source (announced 2022-01-24, expected to close mid-February 2022); terms undisclosed
- honeybeerobotics.com redirects (HTTP 307) to blueorigin.com as of 2026-09-25; no 2026 primary source found showing Honeybee still trading under its own name, so active_subsidiary vs absorbed needs review
- Peer-reviewed Lunar PlanetVac results paper (Space and Planetary Resources, 2026) is behind a bot wall; only its title was confirmed (via Crossref metadata)
Record history
changes to this record's facts, newest first
| Changed | Field | Was | Now | Reason | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | parent id | Ensign-Bickford Industries (not in roster) | org-blue-origin | Source update | [1] |
Sources
13 sourcesHoneybee Robotics (Honeybee) today announced that it will be acquired by Blue Origin.
With major operations in Longmont, Colorado and Altadena, California, Honeybee will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Origin
Since 1983, Honeybee Robotics has delivered more than 1,000 advanced projects
Developed by Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin Company, TRIDENT is a rotary percussive drill designed to excavate lunar regolith and subsurface material up to 3.3 feet (1 meter) deep.
Intuitive Machines said images collected later confirmed the lander was on its side, preventing it from fully operating the drill and other instruments before its batteries were depleted.
While MSOLO was able to perform several scans to detect gases, researchers believe from the initial data that the gases detected were all anthropogenic, or human in origin
Lunar PlanetVac successfully collected, transferred, and sorted lunar soil from the Moon.
Developed by Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company of Altadena, California, LPV is a pneumatic, compressed gas-powered sample acquisition and delivery system
The technology on this CLPS payload could benefit the search for water, helium, and other resources
In the coming months, the team will integrate the drill into NASA's first robotic Moon rover, VIPER
Firefly Aerospace and Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, today announced Honeybee was contracted
Honeybee Robotics designed and fabricated a Pneumatic Sampler, or P-Sampler, that will capture surface material on Phobos.
Results of Lunar PlanetVac, a pneumatic regolith sampling system deployed to the moon on Blue Ghost Mission 1