The CubeRover is a smaller moon rover that might someday be used to map large areas of the moon as part of a “swarm.”

A few new extraterrestrial visitors will be rolling in to this year's Mars New Year festival.

Pittsburgh North Side-based lunar logistics startup Astrobotic will bring several moon rovers to the event later this August.

Mars Mayor Gregg Hartung announced the partnership at the borough council meeting Monday night.

“We didn't know what they were bringing before, so we worked that out within the last week or so,” Hartung said.

Astrobotic describes itself as a “lunar logistics” company, and works with government and commercial entities to send payloads to the moon. The startup has partnered with NASA and plans to send its Peregrine and Griffin lunar landers to the moon in the next few years. It has worked with a number of other aerospace companies, including SpaceX.

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