PT Scientists

PTScientists began in 2009 as Part-Time Scientists, Berlin volunteers competing for the Google Lunar X Prize under founder Robert Boehme. It professionalized into a lunar transport company building ALINA, a robotic lander, with Audi engineering rovers for it and Vodafone and Nokia planning a 4G network at the landing site, the valley where Apollo 17 touched down.

The lander never flew. The X Prize cut the team in 2017 for lack of a launch contract, and in July 2019 the company filed for insolvency in Berlin while its website still promised a mission to the Moon. A logistics firm bought it out of insolvency and renamed it Planetary Transportation Systems; a management buyout followed, and the slimmed company took propulsion and engineering work, including a role on ESA's Astris kick stage alongside ArianeGroup.

The end came without an announcement. In November 2024 the legal entity was dissolved by merger into an investment vehicle, a fact recorded in the German commercial register and covered by no press at all. The websites stayed up, advertising a Moon mission that had been out of reach for years. In fifteen years the company launched nothing.