Pittsburgh’s technology hub touted as Commerce Commerce tours space robotics facility

Once known as a city reliant on steel production, Pittsburgh is now touted as a technology hub with a focus on innovation.

“It’s incredible the transformation that has happened in this city in the last few decades,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo after concluding a tour of Astrobotic’s space robotics facility on the city’s North Shore Thursday afternoon with Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto.

Pittsburgh-based aerospace company Astrobotic has several missions planned to take rovers and other payloads to the moon, with the first of them, called Peregrine, scheduled to land on the lunar surface next year. Peregrine is poised to be the first commercial mission to the moon.

“We’re connecting the world to space,” said Ander Solorzano, lead system engineer for the Peregrine mission and a Carnegie Mellon University graduate. “This is about making space commercially accessible worldwide.”

Peduto.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo spoke after touring Astrobotic this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/EZkZyezO6Q

— Julia Felton (@JuliaFelton16) September 30, 2021

The Peregrine mission will take NASA payloads to the moon, along with a rover from Carnegie Mellon University and cargo from countries including Mexico, Germany and Japan.

“Space is the final frontier and should be available to everyone,” Solorzano said, explaining that Astrobotic aims to level the playing field for countries who do not yet have space exploration capabilities by launching commercial missions like Peregrine.

“We’re super excited to carry Pittsburgh to the moon,” he said.

In 2023, Astrobotic will launch another lunar mission, called Griffin. Griffin will take a NASA rover to the moon’s south pole, said Daniel Gillies, mission director for the Griffin mission.

Space, Peduto said, is a place “where we can lead in the future.”

The city is not just a hub for space robotics, Raimondo said, noting its prominence in fields like autonomous technology and artificial intelligence.

“There’s a hub of innovation here, which is real, which is growing,” Raimondo said, calling the city a “a vibrant and deep ecosystem of technology and innovation.”

The city is a prime candidate for several investments into the manufacturing sector that President Joe Biden’s administration is now prioritizing, she said. She highlighted the $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge, which is designed to invest up to $70 million per community to stimulate innovation hubs, as well as an initiative to create regional technology hubs that use government funds to stimulate local hubs of innovation with specific areas of expertise.

Tech companies like Astrobotic not only provide key innovations, but they also provide manufacturing jobs that support regional growth, Peduto said.

“It’s not only the people coming out of Carnegie Mellon with Ph.D.s. It’s the workers and the trained skill workers and the GEDs that will come out of parts of our city and our rural areas who will be called upon to use their skills in order to be able to make the parts to make this happen,” he said. “This is where the future of our economy is moving.”

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