Fixer-upper (8/8/23)

Good morning. A quick programming note that this week’s Pathfinder will be delayed by a day. Be sure to check out our brand new episode when it drops tomorrow!

In today's edition...
💰 Benchmark Series B
🚀 Starliner update
🔁 On the move

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Benchmark Clinches $33M, Launches Autopilot for Satellites

Benchmark Space Systems, the Burlington, VT-based propulsion systems provider, is keeping busy. This week, the company announced a $33M Series B funding round, unveiled new digs, and debuted a brand-new satellite autopilot product called SmartAIM.

Benchmark’s Series B: Benchmark announced this morning that it’s closed a $33M Series B to speed up the process of transitioning its primary focus from R&D to production to meet customer demand and fulfill the 250+ backlogged orders for its nontoxic thruster systems for satellites across the size spectrum.

Stone Point Capital led the round, which also included participation from JH Capital, The Fund at Hula, FreshTracks Capital, and several past investors.

The new HQ: A “significant part” of the Series B round went toward a new facility for propulsion systems manufacturing and testing, CEO Ryan McDevitt told Payload. The new facility is 40,000 square feet—about four times the size of the previous building—and will allow the company to pick up its production rate.

Benchmark has already started the move into the new facility and will be ramping up production over the coming months. To date, Benchmark has delivered seven propulsion systems and is planning to deliver another dozen units this year. Eventually, the new facility will be able to produce “hundreds of systems a year,” COO Wesley Grove told Payload.

Hands-off collision avoidance

Benchmark also announced yesterday that it’s launching SmartAIM, a software layer to act as a driver assist for satellites, taking the complexity out of conducting maneuvers.

SmartAIM started as a project with AFRL, and grew into a commercial offering to support a safe orbital environment. “They wanted a layer between the bus stack in the satellite’s GNC system and the propulsion that could translate abstract maneuver mobility commands and the propulsion controller would handle the rest,” Benchmark EVP Chris Carella told Payload.

The result: A software product that, at its base level, allows operators to send simpler commands to its satellites that the system will then interpret. As it gets more sophisticated, the software can allow complete autonomy when the system determines a maneuver is necessary. Benchmark has partnered with Kayhan Space to enable automatic collision avoidance maneuvers, making the operation of fleets of satellites safer and more manageable.

“We have customers that went from a couple of demonstrators to batches of eight to 16 satellites,” Carella said. “And they're saying, ‘Oh, boy, we can never sleep. It's like a newborn at night. There's always one that needs attention.’ And then you have folks saying, ‘We're gonna go fly 100 or 300 satellites’—what army is going to drive the decisions across 300 satellites?”

SmartAIM will be available to customers on a subscription basis as a software layer, compatible with all of Benchmark’s propulsion systems.

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Starliner Aims to Fly in Q1 2024

It’s finally confirmed: Starliner will fly again.

In a briefing with NASA yesterday, Boeing ($BA) gave the first revised launch date for its crew capsule since last-minute reviews in June revealed that it was not yet ready to carry astronauts to the ISS weeks before the first planned crewed launch.

Now it’s aiming to be ready to carry a crew by March 2024. The actual flight date will depend on ISS needs and Atlas availability.

Fixer-upper: During the June review, two issues with the craft came up.

1. Parachutes. The biggest safety issue came down to parachute deployment. If one of the three parachutes had a deployment issue, then the soft links connecting the other two to the capsule could snap. Boeing is planning a drop test in November with modified chutes and believes that only one test will be necessary.

2. Tape. Hundreds of feet of P-213 glass cloth tape was used to wrap wiring harnesses throughout the vehicle, and tests showed that it can be flammable under certain circumstances. To address this, Boeing is dividing Starliner into 12 “zones” and assessing the risk of the tape in each. It aso removed 80% of the tape on the upper dome.

Playing catch-up: NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX at the same time back in 2014 to build commercial crew vehicles to ferry astronauts to the ISS by 2017. Though neither capsule met that deadline, the difference is clear: SpaceX is gearing up for its seventh operational crewed Dragon flight, while Starliner is still grounded almost a decade later.

Boeing has also significantly overspent on the Starliner program on top of its original $4.2B fixed-price contract. Financial results reveal that the company has racked up >$1.4B in additional costs.

In Other News

• Amazon is moving its first manifested Kuiper sats from the inaugural Vulcan launch to an Atlas V. The two test satellites have been in storage since March.

• Lunar Outpost delivered its Lunar Vertex MAPP rover to Johns Hopkins’ APL for final testing.

• NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce removed operational restrictions from several EO companies’ licenses (including Umbra’s).

• NASA and Mongolia had a meeting last week, and the Mongolian PM Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai signed an agreement to increase the countries’ space cooperation.

• Russia launched its first GLONASS-K2 navigation satellite on a Soyuz-2.

• Thailand is speeding up a feasibility study to open a spaceport.

The View from Space

The Sun may not have 37 pieces of flare (Office Space, anyone?), but it does have one very large one, spotted Saturday evening by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.