Bringing Space Marketing Down to Earth
From Pabst to the Moon: Astrolab's Andy DeMatos on selling lunar rovers to people on Earth.
Hard tech has a marketing problem. Not a lack of talent, but a language barrier between those building the future and the world that needs to understand why it matters. The best marketers in this space aren't just translators, they're architects of belief.
Staying In Orbit exists to surface those voices. Each issue, we sit down with a marketing leader at a company defining what's next in space, science, and hard tech — and ask them how they think, what they've learned, and where the field is heading.
— Chandler, Founder & Chief Galactic Officer at Imagine Milk
This month we're hearing from Andy DeMatos, Head of Marketing at Astrolab, the company building rovers for the lunar surface. Andy came up through account management at ad agencies, ran creative at Pabst Blue Ribbon, then moved into EV marketing, where he worked shoulder to shoulder with car designers. Now he's building an industrial design studio inside Astrolab's marketing team. We talked about why space marketing needs to come down to Earth and what's riding on FLIP.
Andy DeMatos, Head of Marketing @ Astrolab
IM: You came to space from advertising and EVs. What did that path teach you about marketing hardware?
A: I got my first dip into the creative industry through account management at ad agencies. After 7+ years of that I became Creative Director at Pabst Blue Ribbon. Then in EV, the entire car design studio basically had to turn into the marketing department.
That's where I learned that industrial designers and product designers are some of the best marketers you could ask for. Their knowledge of the customer, and their interaction with the product, is something that as a marketer you beg for. In most instances, if someone has a bad experience with a product, there's no amount of brand and marketing that can make up for that.
IM: What surprised you most about moving from automotive to space?
A: Design really ruled the roost in automotive. Engineers had to ask permission from designers to make decisions. It's completely flipped in space. It has to work. Bottom line, thermodynamics wins. Mass and volume win.
You're never going to have a conversation with an engineer based purely on aesthetics or taste. It's: how well is it put together? Does this thing work? Traditionally the mindset has been just make sure it works. But with the new focus on Moonbase and the national pride attached to what we're doing, there needs to be a lot of consideration wrapped up into the design. That's why marketing has extended into industrial design, and why we're building a design studio here. Every industry has its design moment. This is ours.
IM: How is the way we market space changing?
A: Space communications have been very aspirational and very zoomed out. Rockets, big visions, humanity being multi-planetary. As lunar operations become real, we need more tangible framing. Think of the Moon as an 8th continent.
Creating a connection between the hardware and the external brand of the business is truly important. Industrial design is how you create familiarity and friendliness with such complicated hardware that has such serious implications for mankind. Look at Anduril and Vast. Anduril completely rebranded the Department of Defense. In space, good design can help shift the narrative away from a billionaire's race and toward what it really is: a lot of science, and a lot of benefit to humanity.
LUMIS, deployed. Astrolab's new power, communications, and data node for the Moon. (Image: Astrolab)
IM: FLIP is Astrolab's next big moment. How are you approaching the launch?
A: FLIP is really carrying the weight of a lot of things. It's a technology demonstration for our hardware and flight systems, and for NASA it's the next right step for Moonbase and the success of future programs around Artemis. It's the biggest rover by mass to land on the Moon by a US company.
We want to get more than engineers excited about it. The science and engineering stakes are real: surviving the night, searching for water ice. Creatively, I'm looking at 1970s and '80s automotive ads, like Volkswagen, and sitcoms and the way they introduce humor. The goal is strong relatability while still telling the engineering and science story.
IM: For marketers trying to keep up, how is the playbook different in space?
A: As a marketer you have like 19 channels, from blogs and SEO to social to above-the-line communications. In space you have to go a layer deeper on all of them. So much runs through shows, panels, and much more focused subchannels, alongside competitors and partners, with an extremely engaged audience. You have to treat each one almost as a Super Bowl.
Our latest booth is a good example. We worked within a lot of constraints and got two booths for the price of one. Instead of bells and whistles, we treated it like a CMF study: wall, TV, and floor. A rotating monolith in brushed aluminum, FLIP in its egress position, a brushed aluminum floor with a bright orange wall. With next to nothing, we're creating quite a big statement with very few parts.
LUMIS on charging duty. Nodes are built to recharge visiting rovers and beam their data home. (Image: Astrolab)
Hot off the press: This week at UP.SUMMIT, Astrolab unveiled LUMIS (Lunar Utility Module for Industrial Services), a power, communications, and data node for the Moon, alongside LUNAR OS, an integrated suite that pairs its FLEX rovers with LUMIS nodes. Instead of sitting wherever a lander can touch down, nodes get driven tens of kilometers to the spots with the best sunlight and line of sight to Earth. Demo nodes are designed for 2 kW, future nodes for 20 kW, and a linked grid could top 100 kW. First deployment is targeted for 2028 on a FLEX mission aboard Starship. Explore the new site at astrolab.space and read the full announcement here.
In The Imagine Milk Orbit 🚀
🍻 Beyond Reach Labs x Imagine Milk happy hour, recapped. Thank you to everyone who came out on October 6th. We packed the rooftop to welcome Beyond Reach Labs to NYC, and it's been awesome to see how quickly their team is growing.
Beyond Reach Labs x Imagine Milk happy hour, October 6.
📺️ CesiumAstro x Transporter-18. We are partnering with CesiumAstro to help tell the story of their Transporter-18 mission. Watch the recent launch recap here.
❄️ NY Space Annual Holiday Party, December 10. We're teaming up with DIA and Empire Space to host the first annual holiday party for New York's space community (yes, we're making this a thing). RSVP here.
🛡️ Future of National Security: Capital & Tech Summit, November 13. On Friday, November 13, the Columbia Business School Aerospace & Defense and Veterans clubs are hosting the inaugural Future of National Security: Capital & Tech Summit. New York City is the center of gravity for global finance. It's time to bring the financiers, the founders and the fighters together. Learn more here.
