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Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) spend a surprising share of their limited working hours on tasks that have nothing to do with science. Unpacking cargo bags, checking seals, and other routine chores eat into time that could otherwise go toward research. A New York startup called Icarus Robotics wants to change that, and it has just picked a Texas company to supply the power source for its solution.
Icarus Robotics builds JOY, a free flying robot designed to move through the pressurized interior of the space station using small fans, much like a submarine glides through water. Equipped with two robotic arms, JOY is meant to take over the kind of repetitive logistics work that currently falls to astronauts, letting the human crew spend more of their time on higher value tasks. The company was founded in Brooklyn in 2024 and has since raised $6.1 million in seed funding, backed by investors including Soma Capital and Xtal.
To power JOY, Icarus has turned to KULR Technology Group, Inc. (NYSE American: KULR), a Houston based company that designs battery systems for demanding environments where reliability cannot be compromised. KULR will supply its KULR ONE Space battery system, a technology that has already flown on NASA’s Artemis II crewed lunar mission and is engineered to meet NASA safety standards. That heritage matters here because a robot operating unattended among astronauts on a crewed station leaves essentially no room for a power failure or a safety incident.
The KULR ONE Space system is built around the company’s REACH battery architecture, which is designed to pack a lot of energy into a small, lightweight package. The cells that go into it are put through a series of NASA screening protocols, including Initial Lot Assessment, Lot Acceptance Testing, and the WI 37A cell screening process, before they are cleared for use. In practice, this means every cell has been individually vetted for consistency and safety long before it ends up inside a flight ready battery.
JOY is expected to make its trip to the space station in early 2027 as part of a mission called JOYRIDE 1, and if the schedule holds, it will be the most advanced free flying robotic platform NASA has hosted on the ISS to date. The mission is also notable because Icarus is working with Voyager Technologies, which manages the only commercial airlock currently on the station, to handle the logistics of getting JOY into orbit and operating once it arrives.
For KULR, the deal adds to a growing list of space related work. The company has previously supplied battery systems tied to the Artemis program, has an active rideshare mission underway with Exolaunch aboard a SpaceX vehicle, and counts several commercial space operators among its customers. KULR’s manufacturing and testing facility in Webster, Texas will handle production and qualification work for the Icarus batteries, adding another line of business to a company that has been expanding its footprint across space, defense, drones, and data center backup power.
What makes this particular partnership interesting is less about either company individually and more about what it signals for how orbital infrastructure gets maintained going forward. Once a station is in orbit, there is no technician who can simply walk over and fix a broken system. That reality is pushing companies to build robots that can inspect, repair, and assist with upkeep on their own, and every one of those robots needs a power source it can trust completely. KULR’s bet is that as more companies build autonomous hardware for space, the batteries running underneath all of it will become just as important as the robotics itself.
