Material Handling - Depart of Energy Collaboration

Winning the Cold War and the research of the Manhattan project created dozens of hazardous nuclear and chemical waste sites across the country. These sites collectively represent billions of dollars of unpaid government liability. NASA technology, such as R5, has the opportunity to reduce the cost of site cleanup by reducing the hazards that would need to be faced by workers in cleaning up such sites. The environment at these sites (radiation, dust, restricted access) present many challenges that are similar to future mission cases for R5. Many proposed tasks are analogs as well.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.