Honeybee Robotics

Recognized under Tier 2 — In-Situ Resource Utilization, Honeybee Robotics is a veteran builder of planetary drilling, excavation, and sample-acquisition hardware, now operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of Blue Origin following its 2023 acquisition. Its instruments have flown on numerous NASA missions, including sampling and coring tools on the Mars Perseverance rover and the percussive mole on the InSight lander. The company's PlanetVac pneumatic sampling system is being supplied, as the P Sampler, to JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission to Phobos. Honeybee also holds a NASA contract, running through July 2026, for the Capture, Containment, and Retrieval System, Earth Entry System, and Spin Eject Mechanism supporting Mars Sample Return. Its hardware represents the mechanical front end of ISRU — the tools that physically break, gather, and handle regolith and rock — a prerequisite for any system that later extracts water, oxygen, or metal from planetary surfaces.