Icarus Robotics just closed a $6.1 million seed round to solve space's most mundane problem: astronauts spending most of their time as cosmic warehouse workers instead of doing science. The startup's intelligent robots could handle the cargo logistics that currently consume 90 minutes of every two-hour experiment on the International Space Station.
"We're Amazon warehouse workers with PhDs," one astronaut told Icarus Robotics cofounders Ethan Barajas and Jamie Palmer during their startup research. That brutal assessment captures the reality aboard the International Space Station, where highly trained astronauts burn precious time on mundane logistics instead of cutting-edge science.
The numbers tell the story. Every 60 days, roughly 3.5 tons of cargo arrive at the ISS, and astronauts spend two full weeks unpacking and stowing everything. When an experiment should take two hours, the first 90 minutes go to moving cargo and prepping tools. It's a massive waste of talent that costs taxpayers millions per astronaut-hour.
Barajas and Palmer, who connected through the Entrepreneurs First program, saw an obvious solution: let intelligent robots handle the grunt work. But they're not building humanoid robots. Instead, Icarus is starting with something simpler - a fan-propelled robot equipped with two arms and jaw grippers that can tackle 80% of required dexterity tasks.
"We were able to demonstrate that you don't need to go the whole way to hands to get meaningful dexterity at a long distance," Palmer explained after the team successfully demonstrated their bimanual system unzipping, unpacking, and re-zipping actual ISS cargo bags during recent ground tests.
The $6.1 million seed round, led by Soma Capital and Xtal with participation from Nebular and Massive Tech Ventures, will fund their path to orbit. The startup plans parabolic flight testing next year, followed by a full year-long demonstration aboard the ISS through partnership with Voyager Space, which operates the commercial Bishop airlock.
Initially, the robots will be teleoperated from Earth. Palmer argues the ISS is one of the few workplaces where you can justify having a full-time robot operator because "the labor arbitrage margin is so big." A skilled robotic operator costs far less than astronaut time, even when factoring in their high salaries.
The longer-term vision involves "embodied AI" - collecting microgravity manipulation data with humans in the loop, then training foundational models for orbital robotics. This mirrors terrestrial robotics trends but adapted for space physics. Eventually, wants partial autonomy where humans issue high-level commands like "open the bag" rather than controlling every movement.