Soak up the sun (6/21/23)

Good morning. Today’s staff announcement involves a familiar face. You’ve likely already seen Jack Kuhr’s byline in the newsletter over the past several months as a contributor, but Jack is now officially part of Payload’s growing full-time team, and we couldn’t be more excited!

A word from Jack:

Hi everyone 👋! It’s been amazing getting to know you all. The Payload community really is the best. If we haven’t yet connected, please reach out by Email or Twitter!

Here’s to building and exploring space.

In today's edition...
🔎 Danti’s $2.75M pre-seed
☀️ A solar power MOU
📃 Space opportunities
💸 The term sheet

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EO Search Startup Emerges From Stealth

Danti is emerging from stealth today with the announcement of a $2.75M pre-seed funding round, according to a release shared with Payload.

What is Danti? The startup, which was founded this year, seeks to make the huge amount of EO information collected in space and from other sources easier to use. The company is building a simple AI-driven search engine that can quickly sort through pictures and data collected by satellites, drones, and aircraft, as well as other information from analytics firms and social media.

“There’s a staggering amount of data out there, but it’s all siloed and distributed. As a result, this valuable data is only available to experts who know exactly where to look for it and how to piece it together,” Jesse Kallman, CEO and cofounder of Danti, said in a statement. “Danti is on a mission to open access to data on physical locations by building the market’s first search engine—one that’s as easy to use as the popular search engines we all use to surf the web.”

An example: The tech has obvious defense and intel applications to allow officials to quickly and efficiently search through all the data collected by government satellites. But it also has practical everyday use cases. Someone could pose the search engine a simple question, such as “how old is the roof at my address?” Danti will pull county permit records, high-res imagery of the property and other analytics to answer the question, according to the press release.

The round: The pre-seed round was led by Tech Square Ventures. Other participants include Radius Capital, Philip Krim and Raven One Ventures, SpaceVC, Overline, Tareyton Ventures, Jordan Noone, Keith Masback, and Jeff Crusey.

The money will be used to speed up development of the company’s search engine tech.

But wait, there’s more: Danti is also announcing that it won an open challenge in April sponsored by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. The company is now working with defense and intel agencies to bring its search tool to national security operators.

“We are building a search engine that brings order to the chaos,” Martice Nicks, CTO and cofounder, said in a statement. “By leveraging the latest advancements in AI and [natural language processing], Danti will empower our defense, intelligence, and commercial customers to make searching their own data, and all publicly available data, as simple as searching the web.”

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Harnessing the Sun

Two startups are working together to build the world’s first commercial space-based solar power (SBSP) station which will capture the Sun’s energy in orbit and wirelessly transmit it to Earth for continuous use.

Orbital Composites and Virtus Solis announced the MOU yesterday for the station, which will use photovoltaic arrays to collect solar energy in space.

The players:

• Orbital Composites is an advanced manufacturing company that uses 3D printing to mass produce SBSP satellites with phase-arrays and power electronics. It already has partnerships with other major players in the space industry such as the US Space Force, Axiom Space, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin.

• Virtus Solis is an early-stage deep tech startup incorporated in 2019 that focuses on wireless power transmission (WPT) technology. The company uses microwave WPT to make the transfer of solar energy from space to ground more efficient, and aims to keep energy costs low enough to replace fossil fuels globally.

Better together: Virtus and Orbital connected at Seraphim’s Generation Space Accelerator Mission 11 in April and solidified a partnership over the following months. Virtus plans to progress from a proof of concept phase to a manufacturing process development phase over the next 18 months.

“Orbital Composite's manufacturing as a service capability will accelerate the development of Virtus Solis's tile satellite architecture and progress it towards mass manufacture with a first on-orbit test in 36 months of 100+ satellites,” said John Bucknell, CEO and founder of Virtus.

Dividing responsibility: The core SBSP technologies — antenna arrays, power electronics, and modular mega-structures — will be designed by Virtus, while Orbital will leverage its expertise in robotic manufacturing to develop scalable manufacturing processes and produce 3D printed phase-array antennas and turnkey satellites, as well as the in-space service, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM) of the Virtus SBSP station.

“Virtus' Space-Based Solar Power stations exemplify Orbital's vision to do high-volume manufacturing and assembly of some of the largest structures ever made in-space,” Orbital CEO Amolak Badesha told Payload. “Short-term, we get an amazing customer that pushes our technology forward to deep integration between electronics and composites. Long-term, Virtus represents one of the largest commercial opportunities for ISAM, with the potential to transform the worldwide energy landscape.”

Space Opportunities

Here are the top government opportunities for space companies this week, as compiled by our partner TZero.

🔋 DARPA has released another interesting RFI, this one for ideas on how to harness energy from the unique VLEO environment. DARPA is looking for mission approaches, technologies, and modeling and sim capabilities. Responses are due July 18.

🚀 SSC (RSLP) has released a solicitation for the OPS-4 On-Ramp #2. This IDIQ provides an opportunity for new orbital launch providers to support upcoming government missions, and builds on several prior awards. Responses are due July 10.

☄️ MDA has released an RFI determining industry interest and capability for the development and production of Modified Ballistic Re-entry Vehicles (MBRV). Responses are due July 17.

Additional opportunities and details can be found in the TZero Space Tracker.

In Other News

• ULA’s penultimate Delta IV Heavy mission to launch a classified NRO payload was delayed due to a problem with a ground systems pneumatic valve.

• Roscosmos may be recruiting troops for the conflict in Ukraine.

• Virgin Galactic’s stock price is soaring ahead of its first commercial flight expected as early as next week.

• Tiangong's robotic arm installed an electric propulsion system gas container in orbit.

The View from California

Eugene Tu, the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, greeted President Joe Biden on Monday when the president arrived in California for a trip focused on AI and campaign-related events.