Oversubscribed (6/22/23)

Good morning. Happy Thursday, and a happy belated first day of summer.

In today's edition...
💰 Continuum’s $3M seed round
🚀 NorthStar’s new ride
📝 The contract report

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Exclusive: Continuum Announces $3M Seed Round

Continuum Space Systems announced today that it has closed a $3M seed round, bringing the company’s total fundraising to more than $6M.

Continuum’s mission: The startup, which was established in 2021, offers customers a cloud-based platform to take care of many of the logistics required to quickly get customers to space. Customers can come to Continuum with an idea for a space mission, but no clear details on how many spacecraft will be needed, what orbits will be required, or other scientific details, CEO Marc Fagan told Payload.

The company can then work on ideation, design, build, and test milestones. Once the mission is launched, Continuum also takes care of mission operations in orbit, primarily with machine learning and AI.

“We’re all about getting people to space faster and cheaper,” he said.

The platform is built around technology licensed from Caltech, which manages NASA’s JPL, according to the company’s website.

The round: The seed round was led by Prophetic Capital Partners. Other investors include Mandala Space Ventures, Explorer1 Fund, Freeflow Ventures, and Unlock Venture Partners.

Fagan said Continuum initially sought to raise $2M for the round, but has oversubscribed to $3M and is still fielding additional interest that could push it even higher.

“We couldn’t be happier,” he said. “This is going to give us a superior position to lock this space down and own it.”

The seed funding will allow Continuum to add to its engineering team, launch new platform features, and grow its customer base.

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NorthStar to Launch With Rocket Lab

NorthStar, an in-situ space situational awareness (SSA) startup, has partnered with Rocket Lab to launch its first four satellites this fall. Rocket Lab is tapping in after NorthStar's planned Virgin Orbit launch bit the dust.

“It’s quite accommodating by Rocket Lab, so we're really happy to have them as a partner. We're engaging with them for a long-term partnership,” NorthStar COO David Saint-Germain told Payload.

After the scheduled fall launch, the Montreal-based business has two additional Rocket Lab missions expected to fly in the “short-term future.”

NorthStar 101: NorthStar’s satellites—dubbed Skylarks—will track objects in orbit from their own perch in space, a first in the industry. Ground-based sensors perform the satellite and object tracking that exists today.

• The planned constellation will include ~30 Skylarks, but NorthStar will be able to achieve full orbit-tracking capabilities with just 12 birds.

• The company closed a $35M Series C in January to accelerate its SSA satellite deployment.

The in-situ advantage: In-situ tracking can monitor objects not observable from the ground, such as 5-cm objects in LEO and 40-cm objects in GEO. This will provide customers with more granular data on the growing orbital debris problem.

One million debris: ESA estimates that there are 1M space debris fragments between 1 cm and 10 cm in size. Tracking this space debris has become increasingly important in safeguarding the long-term health and usability of Earth's orbit, since objects as small as a fingernail can do serious damage when whizzing around at high speeds.

In Other News

• AST SpaceMobile used its space-based cellular broadband network to communicate directly with smartphones for the first time.

• ESA delivered the Artemis II service module to NASA.

• Ecuador became the 26th country to join the Artemis Accords.

• Chinese taikonauts installed a radiation-tracking experiment on the outside of the Tiangong space station.

• Ohio politicians are making an 11th-hour push to host US Space Command HQ, though the decision is seemingly down to Colorado or Alabama.

• ULA’s Delta IV Heavy lifted off for the first time this year carrying a classified NRO payload.

The View from Space

We saw lots of great posts for National Selfie Day, but we think this one is our favorite.