Ceres Robotics

Ceres Robotics is an Oakland, California-based commercial lunar surface systems company founded in 2017 by veterans of NASA's Mars rover programs at JPL — engineers who spent careers developing, operating, and troubleshooting Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, bringing mission-tested robotic surface operations expertise directly to commercial lunar lander and rover development under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

The company's primary CLPS program is the B5 lander: a large-class lunar delivery vehicle targeting approximately 1 metric ton of surface payload capacity — significantly exceeding the payload capacities of first-generation CLPS landers (Astrobotic Peregrine at ~100 kg, Intuitive Machines Nova-C at ~100 kg, Firefly Blue Ghost at ~150 kg). This heavier payload class positions B5 for delivering large science instruments, substantial ISRU (in-situ resource utilization) equipment, pressurized logistics modules, or multi-rover deployments to the lunar surface as the Artemis program scales toward sustained lunar presence in the late 2020s and 2030s.

MoonPower is Ceres Robotics' second major product line: a concept for a distributed lunar surface power infrastructure — solar arrays, battery storage, and power distribution systems — providing persistent electrical power to payloads and future crewed infrastructure at the lunar surface. The fundamental challenge is the 14-Earth-day lunar night during which solar power is unavailable, making battery-buffered power systems or alternative sources (nuclear RTGs, beamed power) essential for any sustained lunar surface operations. MoonPower aims to deploy and interconnect power generation nodes at strategic locations — potentially crater rims where sunlight is nearly continuous near the south pole — creating a shared power grid for the growing lunar economy.

Ceres Robotics' founding team's JPL Mars rover operations heritage is a significant differentiator in the CLPS competitive field: actual mission operations experience managing anomalies, navigating terrain, and executing surface science under real mission constraints — not just spacecraft hardware development. Competing CLPS lander developers include Astrobotic Technology, Intuitive Machines, Firefly Aerospace, and Draper Laboratory. The MoonPower infrastructure concept competes with emerging lunar power solutions from Astrobotic's CubeRover power modules and Zeno Power's RTG units.