Ride the bus (10/24/22)

Good morning. Anyone else in Vegas for Ascend this week? Reach out if you want to meet up!

In today's newsletter:🚌 Apex raises seed🤖 CONFERS recap 🗓️ The week ahead

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Apex Emerges from Stealth

Apex, an LA-based satellite developer, emerged from stealth today with $7.5M+ in funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from XYZ, J2, Lux Capital, and Village Global.

The name of the game: Apex aims to manufacture satellite buses in the 100-kilogram class that can support ~100 kgs of payload. It aims to sell Aries, its first product, into the commercial space market and support EO and communications missions. Apex says Aries will be available as an off-the-shelf platform that can be configured with specific subsystems to support certain customer needs.

“I've always been under the impression...that commercial access to space really wasn't a thing,” Apex Cofounder Ian Cinnamon told Payload. That’s changed with dropping launch costs, increasingly sophisticated satellite payloads, and the growing volume of data being generated and downlinked from orbit, “but the spacecraft itself, or the satellite bus, is somewhat of an afterthought,” Cinnamon said.

A company must build the bus in-house (which is a multi-year, $10M–$15M endeavor), procure the bus from a traditional government contractor, or “go to one of these more agile R&D firms.” The first category is primarily building government- and national security-focused platforms, Cinnamon said, while the latter tend to focus on cubesats.

What’s changed in recent years? “There's been hundreds of billions of dollars that have been invested into launch companies, which massively reduced the cost of launch.”

• SpaceX charges virtually the same price for 150 or 200 kg Transporter rideshare missions.

• “Mass is no longer directly coupled to cost—it’s now a combo of mass plus volume," Cinnamon said.

“What that means is you no longer need your satellite bus to be custom-built to wrap around your payload,” Cinnamon said, “and you can start to think about making it more of a repeatable platform.”

He wouldn’t share specifics on Aries’s design, as that’s the startup’s secret sauce, but said that “it comes down to better software throughout the entire process.”

• Cinnamon previously founded Synapse Technology, an AI security startup that exited to Palantir.

• Max Benassi, Apex’s other cofounder, formerly built vehicles at SpaceX and served as Astra’s director of engineering.

What next? Apex will principally use its seed funding for recruiting. The funding may not get it all the way to flight heritage, but the startup aims to begin generating revenue by the time Aries (or its precursor) heads to orbit.

+ Want more? Stay tuned for our full Q+A with Cinnamon, which we’ll publish later this week.

CONFERS Dispatch

Government officials and industry gathered just outside DC last week at the CONFERS Global Satellite Servicing Forum to brainstorm solutions for challenges facing the satellite servicing industry. CONFERS = the Consortium for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Operations, an industry group with 60+ members that started in 2017.

Here’s a dispatch from the two-day conference with our top takeaways.

The Goldilocks Effect: Officials were clear that the industry needs some standards, but cautioned that too much red tape could hamstring the nascent market. This search for the “just right” amount of rules is starting to play out at the National Space Council, where officials will host two listening sessions next month on mission authorization and novel space capabilities like servicing and on-orbit manufacturing.

The council will use those listening sessions to draft a proposal for Vice President Kamala Harris no later than March 7, said Diane Howard, the council’s head of commercial space. No word on specifics, but Howard said “I think it will be probably more formal than recommendations.”

Across the pond: France has also begun updating five-year-old space regulations, said Florent Lacomba of CNES, who noted the country currently has no rules governing in-orbit servicing. French officials will propose 30 new requirements—more than the total number of rules on the books today – and aim to finish the process by the end of next year.

Snaps for the FCC: Jacob Geer, chief of staff at the UK Space Agency, applauded the FCC’s recent 5-year deorbiting rule. Geer said the US action has provided cover for British companies to take a similar approach. “For a country the size of the UK to…make that change…it’s almost too strong, it’s almost too dangerous,” he said. “But once a big economy like the US does something like that, it takes some of the fear and risk out of it.”

The need for transparency: If companies start servicing satellites in orbit without being very clear about what they’re doing, things could go south quickly. Therefore, transparency was a key theme of the conference. “If we aren’t transparent, people will assume the worst,” said Mike Gold, Redwire’s EVP for civil space. “Conversely, I’ll tell you a group that isn’t a fan of transparency, and that’s China.”

Who’s buying? Orbital robo-servicers will count civil, commercial, and military space players as customers. Col. Meredith Beg, the deputy director of operations for servicing and maneuver at the Space Force, said that in-space servicing capabilities will be integral for the Pentagon, in part because it would allow troops to maneuver assets to restore capabilities after an attack without worrying about burning through onboard fuel. To that end, the USSF is:

• Establishing a new space mobility logistics program executive officer position within the DoD

• Launching one or more programs to develop and field space mobility logistics tech

What’s next? DARPA, which seeded CONFERS, is setting the industry group free at the end of the year. As of Jan. 1, the group will operate outside the US government as a 501(c)(6) organization with a board of directors. Other staffing specifics are still being finalized, said Astroscale’s COO Chris Blackerby, who serves on the CONFERS executive committee.

Sponsored

How Secure Are Your Space Assets?

Cybersecurity will continue to be top of mind in high stakes environments like space.

SpiderOak Mission Systems is an industry leader in space cybersecurity serving civilian, military, and commercial space operators. The “OrbitSecure” product is the industry standard for ephemeral key creation, rotation, and assignment for secure communications in space.

The company’s product suite ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your most sensitive data in the zero-gravity environments you depend on.

Join Us At Our Ascend Happy Hour Tomorrow

Payload and AIAA are hosting a happy hour for marketing and communication professionals in the space industry.

When? Tue, October 25, 2022, 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM PDT

Where? Yard House at The LINQ, 3545 South Las Vegas Boulevard Las Vegas, NV 89109

In Other News

• NASA has named the team members of its UAP (or UFO) task force.

• The White House is asking SpaceX to bring Starlink to Iran—despite Musk being a “loose cannon,” as one senior defense official told CNN.

• ESA is calling for the development of a homegrown lander for the ExoMars rover.

• NOAA and NASA are readying the superstack of the Joint Polar Satellite System-2 satellite and LOFTID spacecraft for a Nov. 1 launch on an Atlas V.

• Polaris selected the 38 science and research experiments that will fly on the Dawn mission.

• Russia is considering extending its participation in the ISS partnership through 2028.

The View from Earth

NASA sent astronauts on a field trip to the Arizona desert to train for future moonwalking. The rocky terrain, geology, and lack of communications infrastructure make the area a perfect spot to practice, per the agency.