ASTRA derives from earlier work on the Small Radio Telescope and Very Small Radio Telescope. These systems were initially developed by Dr. Alan Rogers of MIT Haystack Observatory and documented in his memo series. Many staff members of MIT Haystack Observatory have contributed to these systems and they have been the subject of many student projects.
The specific ASTRA design was developed as part of a Haystack student project by Joe Lind of Groton Dunstable Region High School and Troop 1 West Groton. This project ultimately became a part of an Eagle Scout project by Joe to contribute the second prototype unit to Groton Dunstable Region High School. Early testing and construction of this unit involved contributions from members of Scouting America Troop 1 West Groton. Dr. Frank Lind developed the first prototype design and software in combination with early testing by Joe Lind.
ASTRA leverages a number of other commercial and open source projects.
The ASTRA user interface has made use of the Claude Sonnet 4.6 model for vibe coding of the astra-ui portion of the code base. This coding was guided by the Nice Vibes AI coding agent guidelines for the python NiceGUI user interface framework. Other code used in ASTRA has been hand developed.