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Description of the Company and Operating Environment | 12 Months Ended
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Jun. 30, 2020
Organization Consolidation And Presentation Of Financial Statements [Abstract] |
Description of the Company and Operating Environment | (1) Description of the Company and Operating Environment Astrotech Corporation (Nasdaq: ASTC) (“Astrotech,” “the Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”), a Delaware corporation organized in 1984, is a science and technology development and commercialization company that launches, manages, and builds scalable companies based on innovative technology in order to maximize shareholder value. Business Overview Segment Information – The Company currently operates two reportable business units, 1st Detect Corporation (“1st Detect”) and AgLAB Inc. (“AgLAB”). Since the Company operates in two segments, all financial segment information required by Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) 280, Segment Reporting (“FASB ASC 280”) can be found in Note 15, Segment Information. Astrotech Technology, Inc. Astrotech Technology, Inc. (“ATI”) owns and licenses the Astrotech Mass Spectrometer Technology™ (the “AMS Technology”), the platform mass spectrometry technology originally developed by 1st Detect. The intellectual property includes 37 granted patents and five additional patents in process along with extensive trade secrets. With a number of diverse market opportunities for the core technology, ATI is structured to license the intellectual property for different fields of use. ATI currently licenses the AMS Technology to three wholly-owned subsidiaries of Astrotech, including to 1st Detect for use in the security and detection market, to AgLAB for use in the agriculture market, and to BreathTech Corporation (“BreathTech”) for use in breath analysis. 1st Detect Corporation 1st Detect, a licensee of ATI for the security and detection market, has developed the TRACER 1000™, the world’s first mass spectrometer (“MS”) based explosives trace detector (“ETD”) certified by the European Civil Aviation Conference (“ECAC”), designed to replace the ETDs used at airports, cargo facilities, secured facilities, and borders worldwide. The Company believes that ETD customers are unsatisfied with the currently deployed ETD technology, which is driven by ion mobility spectrometry (“IMS”). The Company believes that IMS-based ETDs are fraught with false positives, as they often misidentify personal care products and other common household chemicals as explosives, causing unnecessary delays, frustration, and significant wasted security resources. In addition, there are hundreds of different types of explosives, but IMS-based ETDs have a very limited threat detection library reserved only for those several explosives of largest concern. Adding additional compounds to the detection library of an IMS-based ETD fundamentally reduces the instrument’s performance, further increasing the likelihood of false alarms. In contrast, adding additional compounds does not degrade the TRACER 1000’s detection capabilities, as it has a virtually unlimited and expandable threat library. In order to sell the TRACER 1000 to airport and cargo security customers in the European Union, ECAC certification is required. Certain other countries also accept ECAC certification. After receiving ECAC certification for the TRACER 1000 on February 21, 2019, the Company is now marketing to and taking orders from airports and cargo facilities outside of the U.S. that accept ECAC certification. On June 26, 2019, the Company announced the official launch of the TRACER 1000, and on November 22, 2019, also announced the first commercial sale of TRACER 1000 units to a global shipping and logistics company. In the United States, the Company is working with both TSA and TSA Air Cargo towards certification. On March 27, 2018, the Company announced that the TRACER 1000 was accepted into TSA’s Air Cargo Screening Technology Qualification Test (“ACSQT”) and, on April 4, 2018, the Company announced that the TRACER 1000 was beginning testing with TSA for passenger screening at airports. On November 14, 2019, the Company announced that the TRACER 1000 had been selected by the TSA’s Innovation Task Force (“ITF”) to conduct live screening at Miami International Airport. With similar protocols as ECAC testing, the Company has received valuable feedback from all programs. Following ECAC certification and the Company's early traction within the cargo market, testing for both passenger checkpoint and cargo security continued with the TSA, but emphasis was placed on obtaining cargo security approval. With the COVID-19 pandemic, all testing within the TSA was put on hold. However, cargo non-detection testing resumed this summer and cargo detection testing is expected to resume this fall. Given the deterioration in air traffic caused by the pandemic, TSA certification testing for passenger checkpoint security has been put on indefinite hold. AgLAB Inc. AgLAB is a licensee of ATI and has developed the AgLAB-1000™ series of mass spectrometers for use in the agriculture industry for both process control and the detection of trace amounts of solvents and pesticides. The AgLAB product line is a derivative of the Company’s core AMS Technology. BreathTech Corporation BreathTech is developing the BreathTest-1000™, a breath analysis tool to screen for volatile organic compound (“VOC”) metabolites found in a person’s breath that could indicate they may have an infection, including COVID-19 or pneumonia. Development of the BreathTest-1000 follows the Company’s results in pre-clinical trials for the BreathDetect-1000™, a rapid self-serve breathalyzer that is designed to detect bacterial infections in the respiratory tract, including pneumonia. The pre-clinical trials were conducted in collaboration with UT Health San Antonio in 2017.

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- Definition The entire disclosure for the business description and basis of presentation concepts. Business description describes the nature and type of organization including but not limited to organizational structure as may be applicable to holding companies, parent and subsidiary relationships, business divisions, business units, business segments, affiliates and information about significant ownership of the reporting entity. Basis of presentation describes the underlying basis used to prepare the financial statements (for example, US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, Other Comprehensive Basis of Accounting, IFRS). + References Reference 1: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef -Publisher FASB -Name Accounting Standards Codification -Topic 235 -URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2122369 Reference 2: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef -Publisher FASB -Name Accounting Standards Codification -Topic 205 -URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2122149 Reference 3: http://fasb.org/us-gaap/role/ref/legacyRef -Publisher FASB -Name Accounting Standards Codification -Topic 275 -URI http://asc.fasb.org/topic&trid=2134479 + Details
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