Homegrown (5/25/23)

Good morning, and happy Thursday. Let’s jump right into it.

In today's edition...
💎 Fleet Space Series C
🔌 Arcturus turns on
🚀 Nuri launches from South Korea
📝 The contract report

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Fleet Raises $33M to Expand its Mineral Exploration Tech

Fleet raked in $33M in a Series C round yesterday to build out its satellite-enabled mineral exploration solution. Blackbird led the funding round, which valued the startup at $229M.

Down Undah: Headquartered in South Australia, Fleet is hyper-focused on serving one of the region’s largest economies, resource mining. The company leverages its seven-nanosatellite LEO constellation to offers a mineral exploration mapping product, dubbed ExoSphere.

How it works: Ground sensors are placed at a mining survey site to capture seismic noise. Then, by harnessing its satellite connectivity, ExoSphere generates high-resolution 3D subsurface maps for its customers. According to the company, ExoSphere can process data from remote surveying sites in days instead of several months, the norm for ground-only observations.

• Since launching the ExoSphere product a year ago, Fleet has pulled in $28M of contracted revenue from over 30 customers worldwide.

Lithium, gold, nickel: With a global transition to clean energy and battery storage underway, demand for specialty metals has skyrocketed. Fleet aims to support the rapidly transforming ecosystem by expediting mineral mapping surveying and thus increasing supply.

“We are believers that space-enabled data in exploration will allow the search for critical minerals to speed up so much that we will be able to reach humanity’s targets for net zero,” said Fleet cofounder and chief Flavia Tata Nardini.

Next stop, Mars: Since it wouldn’t be a space startup without having one eye trained to the cosmos, Fleet hopes to eventually use its tech to explore the subsurfaces of other celestial bodies.

“Looking ahead, our vision extends beyond Earth as we aim to leverage these cutting-edge techniques to scan the Moon and Mars, enabling responsible exploration and unlocking extraterrestrial resources that were once out of reach," said Nardini.

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Astranis Notches MicroGEO Success

Astranis, an SF-based GEO broadband startup, has successfully deployed its first satellite in orbit to begin providing capacity over Alaska.

“Our MicroGEO satellites will help get millions of people connected to the internet through our commercial customers, and importantly they are a new tool in the toolbox for the US Department of Defense as it increases the resiliency of its fleet of satellites on orbit,” CEO John Gedmark wrote in a blog post.

Targeting GEO: In a world where many are looking to deploy large constellations in LEO to supply low-latency broadband, Astranis is taking the road less traveled, looking to supply more targeted chunks of capacity using small GEO birds. Its MicroGEO design is ~1/20 the size of a traditional GEO satellite (about the size of a stove, for those trying to picture it), and rings in at ~1/10 the cost.

Enter Arcturus: Astranis launched its first MicroGEO satellite, Arcturus, as a secondary payload riding on the Viasat-3 Falcon Heavy mission last month. After launch, the satellite successfully reached its orbital slot, then connected a gateway in Utah with user terminals in Alaska using its software-defined radio payload.

Arcturus will begin providing broadband service in Alaska for Astranis’ customer, Pacific Dataport. “At full capacity, it will more than triple the amount of satellite bandwidth available in the state, bringing prices down and helping connect the 39% of the state that still lacks affordable access to reliable broadband internet,” Gedmark wrote.

Up next: Now that its first satellite is up and running, Astranis has big plans on the horizon.

• Four more MicroGEO satellites are manifested on a dedicated Falcon 9 flight later this summer.

• Looking ahead to 2024, the company is looking to increase its manufacturing capacity to reach 2 satellites per month.

• Astranis is hoping to have 100 MicroGEO satellites in orbit by 2030, Gedmark told Payload in February.

South Korea’s Commercial Space Sector Lifts Off

South Korea’s Nuri rocket, also called KSLV-II, successfully completed its third launch today, marking the first time a Korean launch vehicle carried commercial payloads to space.

Three’s company: Lifting off from Korea’s Naro Space Center, the Nuri launcher deployed eight satellites into orbit, including three from domestic companies: Lumir, Justek, and Kairo Space. Those satellites will be used for space radiation monitoring, Earth observation, and meteorology purposes, respectively.

After winning a technology transfer contract from KARI last year to jointly advance the rocket’s capabilities for its cadence of launches through 2027, Hanwha Aerospace, a leading Korean aircraft engine producer, oversaw the supply and integration aspects of the rocket.

• Aspiring to commercialize the launcher and eventually match SpaceX’s Falcon 9 price per launch, which is currently listed at $67M, Hanwha has set a goal to halve Nuri’s launch cost from its current $80M price tag by 2032.

• Hanwha also developed the rocket’s liquid-propellant engines.

Homegrown: With ambitions to develop its commercial launch capabilities and grow its space industry, South Korea has allocated a record 874.2B won ($674M) for space programs this year—a nearly 20% increase from last year. In step with these plans, Hanwha is reportedly seeking to expand its scope into satellite operation, lunar exploration, and resource extraction.

In Other News

• Honeywell’s Aspire 350 satcom system received Iridium ($IRDM) network certification to transmit over the network.

• NASA and JAXA announced that astronaut Satoshi Furukawa will join the Crew-7 mission to the ISS as a mission specialist.

• Australia’s National Broadband Network has lost 8,000 customers to Starlink in the last three weeks, Shadow Communications Minister David Coleman said.

• Rocket Lab ($RKLB) delayed the final TROPICS launch to tomorrow due to weather.

The View from Space

NASA combined data from JWST, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and a handful of other telescopes to create this shot of the NGC 346 star cluster like you've never seen it before.