Free the beacon (9/13/22)

Good morning. Today, the Shenzhou-14 crew celebrated 100 days in space aboard Tiangong (or “Heavenly Palace”). The crew is prepping for their second spacewalk, per state media.

In today's newsletter:🖥️ Pathfinder #0016🔭 Free the Beacon 🏭 Countdown Q+A🔃 On the move

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Pathfinder #0016, featuring Caleb Henry

These days, the satellite sector is hard-pressed to go a single week without fresh multibillion-dollar megamerger speculation or new household names (ahem, Apple, T-Mobile) jumping into the fray.

That’s why we’re thrilled to have locked down Caleb Henry as today’s Pathfinder guest. He joins us this week to help make sense of the industry madness, from consolidation to direct-to-cell connectivity. And the airing of this episode—on Day 2 of WSBW—couldn’t have been more well-timed if we tried.

Resume in brief: Caleb is one of the sharpest satellite and space analysts out there. He formally holds the title of senior analyst at Quilty Analytics, a space market research, investment banking, and advisory boutique shop.

We treat the firm’s research reports as the gold standard. And, as it so happens, Caleb has a soft spot for our line of work. He also felt the pressures of daily deadlines and the space news cycle before donning the analyst hat, previously working as a staff reporter at SpaceNews and Via Satellite.

S/O—Pathfinder #0016 is brought to you by SpiderOak Mission Systems, an industry leader in cybersecurity.

From IPAs to IPOs, let’s get into the good stuff

🗣️ News: For starters, we ask Caleb to unpack what the T-Mobile/SpaceX partnership means, in practice. How does it shake up the competitive landscape? Also, in our first segment, we give a shout out to one of the most passionate sub-Reddits out there (👋 r/ASTSpaceMobile).

📊 The analyst life: We have Caleb spell out the differences between tracking established mid/large-cap A&D companies, versus the more recently public small-cap ones.

🛰️ A theory of everything: Caleb provides us with “the three-legged stool” metaphor, to explain what the satellite industry needs to succeed.

🚀 Launch: Where is the market tapped out? Conversely, where is there more room to grow? What industry development challenged Caleb’s priors about the heavy-lift market?

🌐 Ukraine: How did Russia’s invasion of Ukraine change the space industry forever?

There’s plenty of range in this conversation, from the serious topics to the lighter stuff. This is one you won’t want to miss.

Watch/listen now:

🖥️ Watch on YouTube 🎧 Listen on Spotify🍏 Get it on Apple

Slingshot Beacon, Free of Charge

In an attempt to get as many space operators communicating on the same platform as possible to lower collision risks in space, Slingshot Aerospace today announced that it plans to offer a version of its Beacon space situational awareness (SSA) platform for free.

“We just feel a grand responsibility here, since we do have the capability to empower and enable the world of spacefaring users,” Slingshot CEO Melanie Stricklan told Payload.

Eyes on space: Austin-based Slingshot Aerospace is focused on building a virtualization of the space environment and everything in it. This “Digital Space Twin,” as the tool is known, lays the foundation for the company’s two products:

1. Slingshot Laboratory, an astronautics training and simulation tool

2. Slingshot Beacon, a platform that allows users to track their assets in orbit and communicate across government, civil, and commercial lines

Slingshot Beacon has been available in beta since August 2021. The startup has padded out the product’s functionality in part by acquiring new features and data. Last month, Slingshot acquired Numerica’s Space Domain Awareness (SDA) division and UK-based Seradata, incorporating each company’s proprietary feeds into its SSA platforms.

The details: Free users on the Beacon platform will have access to its key features: refined conjunction assessment and communication tools to deconflict with other operators.

Slingshot Beacon has been available to users until now on a subscription basis, but Stricklan hopes that by opening a basic version of the service to users free of charge, more users will recognize the value in safe space operations. That’s a win-win as far as Slingshot is concerned, as it could also drive more customers to the company’s revenue-generating products and advanced features.

“When you have a community of this size coming together on a single platform, and communicating and sharing their ephemeris data transparently, it forms a community,” said Stricklan. “That community will inevitably…want to upgrade into other feature sets within our host of technologies, not just Beacon.”

Countdown Raises $15M Second Fund

Last week, Countdown Capital announced that it had closed a $15M Fund II. Started in late 2020 by Jai Malik, Countdown backs hard tech startups looking to “rebuild the American industrial base.” The firm invests at the pre-seed stage and often writes the first check.

Malik is the founder and a solo GP of Countdown. The firm has a full-time chief of staff, Katerina Jennings, and will hire Ryan Li as a full-time principal in early 2023.

Countdown’s average check size is $300,000, though that number will likely rise in the future, Malik told Payload. And the firm’s second vehicle has a 12-year fund life “to accommodate longer timelines for the tech we invest in.”

History: Countdown raised $3M for its first fund back in late 2020 and early 2021. The fund has backed nine startups, including Hadrian Space, which is building a new kind of factory for spacecraft, fighter jets, and flying taxis. Hadrian raised $90M from Lux Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) earlier this year.

Payload caught up with Malik last week to talk about the new rite of passage in venture capital (moving to Miami), his investment thesis, Countdown’s selectivity and screening criteria, and geopolitical flux.

Read the full Q+A here.

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In Other News

• Blue Origin experienced a booster anomaly on yesterday’s payload-only NS-23 mission, causing the New Shepard capsule to rapidly fire, accelerate away from the rocket, and parachute back to Earth.

• The FAA will lead the NS-23 investigation. Until its investigation is completed, New Shepard will be grounded.

• Firefly scrubbed yesterday due to wind constraints. The next launch attempts are Sept. 19 and 20.

• SLS’s next launch opportunity will be on Sept. 27.

• CAPSTONE is power positive, NASA says, and is generating more power than it’s using. Teams are working on a “detumble” operation to regain attitude control of the spacecraft.

• Planet ($PL) posted $48.5M in Q2 revenues (+59% YoY) and raised full-year guidance to $182M–$190M.

• OneWeb and Eutelsat say they’re mulling plans for a second-gen LEO constellation ahead of a potential merger.

• Swarm aims to operate in 40 markets by the end of 2023, cofounder and CEO Sara Spangelo tells Emerging Tech Brew. SpaceX acquired the startup roughly a year ago.

The View from Space