Stone Aerospace, an aerospace engineering firm founded by engineer and explorer Bill Stone, specializes in developing advanced technologies for exploring challenging environments, often where human access is impossible. Originating from Stone's pioneering work in underwater exploration, the firm secured NASA funding in 2003 for DEPTHX, an autonomous underwater vehicle that successfully explored Mexican cenotes and made the first discovery of new bacterial divisions by a robot.
Building on this success, Stone Aerospace contributed to ENDURANCE, a reconfigured DEPTHX vehicle that spent two seasons mapping and collecting data from frozen lakes in Antarctica's Dry Valleys, resulting in one of the planet's most comprehensive 3D biogeochemical lake maps. The firm continued its innovation with Project VALKYRIE, funded in 2010, which developed an advanced cryobot capable of melting through ice using a laser-powered system, field-tested in Alaska. Currently, Stone Aerospace is refining these cutting-edge technologies into a full-sized cryobot known as SPINDLE for future exploration.