Good morning. You’ll see a few new names in today’s edition. Payload readers, meet Kylie Kirschner and Aaron Sorenson, two new freelancers who you’ll be hearing more from over the coming weeks. Read on for both of their debut articles.

Today’s newsletter:
🧳 Vast’s commercial space station
🏗️ Speeding up manufacturing
💲 BlackSky Q1
📝 The contract report

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Vast Planning World’s First Commercial Space Station by 2025

Vast, a space habitation technology company, is planning to launch the world’s first commercial space station, Haven-1, into LEO by August 2025, the company announced Wednesday.

Haven-1 will initially function as an independent crewed space station before connecting with a larger Vast space station currently in development. The station, which can accommodate up to four astronauts, will include features such as 150 kg of pre-loaded cargo capacity, a large window dome for observation and photography, and continuous communications and internet access, so visitors can make Earth-bound friends jealous with their space selfies.

A match made in Haven: SpaceX will play a critical role in Vast’s ambitions. Haven-1, which is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will be followed by Vast-1, a crewed mission to the station that will carry up to four people in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. SpaceX will provide support for the missions, including crew training, launch services, mission simulations, and life-support systems. Vast has also enlisted the expertise of multiple SpaceX veterans as technical advisers.

“A commercial rocket launching a commercial spacecraft with commercial astronauts to a commercial space station is the future of low-Earth orbit, and with Vast we’re taking another step toward making that future a reality,” Tom Ochinero, senior vice president of commercial business at SpaceX, said in a statement.

Dream big: The company’s long-term vision involves developing even larger artificial gravity space stations, including a “Starship-class” module by 2028 and multiple 100 m-long stations that can hold up to 40 astronauts in the 2030s. By the 2040s, Vast envisions a fleet of dozens of space stations with hundreds of astronauts spread across the solar system.

Rising to the challenge: With the International Space Station set to retire by 2030, multiple companies are raising funds to establish private habitats in LEO. Blue Origin aims to have its Orbital Reef station ready by 2027. The Starlab station from Voyager, Lockheed Martin, and Nanoracks is on a similar timeline. Axiom Space also presents competition to Vast, planning liftoff for their space station in late 2025.

Sponsored 

Lifting Humankind to New Heights

NASA's Space Launch System is the world’s most powerful heavy-lift rocket.

The SLS, including the Boeing-built core stage, is designed to send humanity back to the Moon, on to Mars and into the unexplored.

Learn more about how NASA’s Space Launch System is paving the way for humanity to go farther than it has ever gone before.

Picking up the Pace of Aerospace Manufacturing

Manufacturing intricate, specially-designed components for aerospace is a tricky process, requiring high accuracy and precision to build reliable, hardy products. Generally, that leads to long lead times—i.e. a whole lot of waiting around for a delivery from a supplier.

Heliospace, a company that provides NASA with flight hardware and systems engineering, announced yesterday a partnership with custom manufacturing company Fictiv. The two companies have been working together for a few years and say they’ve been able to cut lead times down from ~18 weeks to two.

On the double: Fictiv’s expedited manufacturing process allowed Heliospace to iterate and test faster. Fictiv CEO Dave Evans told Payload that the company is able to bring down lead times for part delivery in a few ways:

• Rather than operating machines in-house, Fictiv uses idle machines at factories with extra capacity, which, Evans says, means that customers don’t have to queue for a limited number of machines in a single shop.

• Fictiv’s design for manufacturing software is meant to make it easier to incorporate feedback and tweaks into the design.

“What we should be doing is doing a rough draft, fabricating in two weeks, testing the hell out of it, figuring out all those things that we never could have predicted, okay, and then moving on,” Heliospace CEO Greg Delory told Payload.

Weighing the costs: While Fictiv’s process isn’t cheaper on a per-part basis than the traditional manufacturing pipeline—generally the price is “competitive” or somewhat higher, Delory said—the CEOs argue the ability to test to reduce risk and iterate several designs in the same time that the company used to be able to test one makes up for the higher cost.

BlackSky Reports Q1 Results

BlackSky ($BKSY) is predicting a boom in 2023, partially driven by growing government demand for its Earth observation imagery and geospatial intelligence.

By the numbers:

• Overall revenue: $18.4M, up 32% YoY

• Imagery and software analytical services revenue: $15.8M, a 114% increase YoY

• Adjusted EBITDA: -$4.1M, up from -$9.5M in Q1 2022

• Net Income: -$17.3M, up from -$20.0M in Q1 2022

• Cash and cash equivalents: $71.6M

2023 outlook: BlackSky remains bullish on its projections for the rest of the year, including annual revenue between $90M-$96M, which would be a 42% increase from 2022. The company’s top priority for the year is a positive adjusted EBITDA in Q4, which it remains on track to achieve.

The company is also working to expand its sales pipeline and customer base, win new multi-year subscription contracts, and will continue to invest in space and AI capabilities.

“With the traction we’re experiencing, we believe the company is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for geospatial intelligence and are re-affirming our guidance for the year,” said CEO Brian O’Toole.

The highlights: The majority of BlackSky’s business for the quarter came from over a dozen new contracts and renewals, primarily with government agencies including the US Air Force, US Space Force, and National Reconnaissance Office.

But the company also deployed two new Gen-2 satellites during the quarter, demonstrating the growing commercial potential of BlackSky’s technology. While commercial contracts still make up only a small portion of BlackSky’s revenue, O’Toole said the company is starting to see some traction with major industrial opportunities, particularly in supply chain monitoring.

Today Is The Day

Launch costs have fallen dramatically over the past several years, but much of the focus of current offerings is on reaching LEO. Launches beyond this, like to GEO and Cislunar, are also ripe for cost disruption as demand is set to grow. The use of orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs) in in-space transportation and services is a key factor in achieving this vision.

This webinar will dive into the launch market beyond LEO and how infrastructure like OTVs can push costs down.

In Other News

• China launched a cargo mission to Tiangong, its LEO space station.

• Impulse Space has qualified its Saiph thruster, which is now ready for its first mission in October.

• Axiom’s second ISS mission will grow stem cells in microgravity.

• Rep. Adam Smith, ranking member on HASC, slammed the GOP for delaying the NDAA markup during debt limit deliberations.

• The GAO highlighted its top nine to-dos for NASA, including setting cost and schedule targets for Artemis technology.

The View from Space

Last week, ESA released its first image of Earth taken by the Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1, a weather satellite that will dramatically improve forecasting in Europe.