Even astronauts do grunt work, including routine maintenance and organizing cargo. It’s a waste of precious space time and taxpayer money—it costs about $130,000 an hour to keep astronauts in orbit. Ethan Barajas’ Icarus Robotics aims to delegate the tedious tasks to robots. Cofounded in 2024 with Jamie Palmer, the New York–based startup is building AI-powered robots to handle the mundane so the highly trained humans “can focus on the groundbreaking discoveries that only astronauts can do,” he says. Barajas interned at NASA at 17 and dropped out of Caltech after three years to build Icarus, which has raised $6.1 million in seed funding. The company is planning a test run of its robots aboard a zero-gravity flight to prepare for a yearlong test onboard the International Space Station in 2027.<br /><br />Read the full story on Forbes: <br /><br />Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1<br /><br />Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:<br /><br />https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript<br /><br />Stay Connected<br />Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com<br />Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes<br />Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes<br />Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes<br />More From Forbes: http://forbes.com<br /><br />Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.
