Surprise: RadPC on the Moon — First SST-Connected University Tech on Lunar Surface¶
Filed: Session 19 (2026-04-14) Status: Open — flagged for human review
Expectation¶
Montana State's RadSat 91661 (SST/GSFC, 2013) was expected to be an academic flight demo with ISS heritage — a solid but contained outcome, similar to other university SST flights.
Reality¶
Brock LaMeres founded Resilient Computing (2020), licensed RadPC from Montana State (2021), won $2.78M in federal contracts (5 NASA + 1 DoD/SOCOM), and RadPC landed on the Moon as a payload on Firefly's Blue Ghost 1 (CLPS) at Mare Crisium, March 2025. RadPC met mission objectives and was the longest-duration instrument of all 10 payloads. It operated through the Van Allen belt and into the lunar night.
Why This Is Surprising¶
- University → company → Moon is an extraordinary trajectory for a single SST seed project. No other university SST investment has reached the lunar surface.
- Parallel SST+FO funding model: SST and FO funded the same technology concurrently starting in 2013. This "technology push + validation pull" dual-funding model may have accelerated the pipeline significantly. LaMeres had 4 FO projects compared to Alexeenko's 1 (Purdue FEMTA) — and LaMeres produced a company while Alexeenko did not.
- EPSCoR state success: Montana has minimal aerospace industry. SST + FO investment built a space computing company in Bozeman. This is the kind of geographic capacity-building impact that NASA's STMD programs rarely get credit for.
- The 12-year timeline: SST 2013 → Moon 2025 is 12 years. Compared to the typical SST→commercial cycle (Busek BIT-3: 2014→2022 Artemis 1 = 8 years), this is longer but the endpoint is more dramatic.
Open Questions¶
- What is Resilient Computing's revenue beyond federal contracts?
- Are there commercial (non-NASA/DoD) customers for RadPC?
- Will RadPC fly on future CLPS missions?
- Does the SST→FO parallel funding model warrant a new archetype? (tentatively: "Parallel Funding Accelerator")
Confidence: confirmed (NASA CLPS press, USASpending, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, NASASpaceflight)