Arthur McMiler
Space robotics startup GITAI USA has established a new unit focused on securing prime contracts for NASA and the Department of Defense projects. A trust company owns 51 percent of the subsidiary, GITAI Defense and Space, to meet some NASA and DOD solicitations’ requirement for prime contractors to be majority-owned by American citizens or permanent residents, GITAI said in its Tuesday announcement of the unit’s establishment.
Focus on National Security Projects
Incorporated in Delaware and based at GITAI USA’s Torrance, California, headquarters, GITAI Defense and Space will concentrate on seeking opportunities in program support for national security missions, such as supplying satellite buses for defense constellations. It will also provide on-orbit services using GITAI’s robotic technology platforms.
The systems that GITAI designs and manufactures for its subsidiary to tap into include entirely U.S.-made robotic arms and rovers, as well as spacecraft. In addition to on-orbit services, the company’s business also covers lunar infrastructure construction.
LunA-10 DARPA Contract
In December 2023, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency selected GITAI along with 13 other companies for its 10-year lunar architecture capability study known as LunA-10. The company’s Japanese unit, GITAI Japan, also received in March a contract from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for a concept study on a robotic arm system on a pressurized crewed lunar rover.
GITAI’s Inchworm-type Robot Arm is certified under Technology Readiness Level 6, following completion of its test in a thermal vacuum chamber simulating the Moon’s south pole environment.
GITAI completed in November its Series B Extension that raised a total of $60.5 million, with the venture capital fund of Japanese entrepreneur and commercial astronaut Yusaku Maezawa as one of the leading investors. The company relocated its headquarters from Japan to California in late 2023, with all its non-U.S. citizen management team members obtaining permanent residency.
