Untapped potential (7/14/23)

Good morning. We’re sending good luck to Rocket Lab, which is prepping for its “Baby Come Back” mission tonight out of New Zealand. Any kind of fool could see that it’s a great night for a rocket launch. 🎸

In today's edition...
💲 AVS’ funding news + space biz plans
🚀 Vulcan update from ULA
💫 Payload’s picks

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Exclusive: Talde Leaps Into Space With AVS Investment

A small engineering firm from the Basque region of Spain nabbed an investment from Talde Private Equity as it prepares to make space a centerpiece of its business.

Added Value Solutions (AVS) develops complex equipment for industries such as fusion, particle accelerators, and space.

Playing the long game: “Space has been on my mind since the first day of AVS’s inception,” AVS CEO Miguel Ángel Carrera told Payload. “In 2006, without any prior space experience, I visited [ESA] to interview with several stakeholders to draft a roadmap of what AVS needed to do to enter the space sector.”

To establish a track record for its eventual entry into the sector, AVS cut its teeth in fusion and particle acceleration, designing equipment with crossover to space.

Since then, the company has notched several space wins, including:

• Inking contracts with ESA, NASA, ISRO, plus partnerships with European primes like Airbus, Thales, and OHB.

• Building two instruments for NASA’s Perseverance rover.

• Developing three subsystems for the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return Mission.

Time for a boost: AVS received its first outside investment in its 17 year history, aimed, in part, at fueling its space business.

Space only accounts for about 50% of the company’s contracts today, but Carrera expects this to grow to 70% in the next decade.

But AVS didn’t go the typical VC route. Instead, it sold a minority stake to Talde, a Spanish firm that invests in high-growth SMEs.

One small step: Talde has invested in 160 companies over the last half-century, but AVS is its first leap into space.

“For Talde, it has been essential to invest in a company with a penetration in the space market already proven with projects carried out for clients such as NASA or [ESA],” Marc Baiget, a director at Talde, told Payload. “Our analysis of the AVS investment has made clear the great potential of the space market and we will leverage on the knowledge acquired in the process to be ready for new opportunities in the market.”

The firm is not disclosing the investment amount, but Talde confirmed it was the third made through its €150M ($168M) investment vehicle launched in 2020.

What’s next? Carrera seeks to position AVS as an advanced mechatronics and robotics provider for Moon, Mars, and in-orbit servicing missions. He has other big plans for the company, including boosting revenue from $27M in 2022 to $34M this year, and launching an EO sat it developed for the Basque government next spring.

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Join ITA and Space Foundation for Spazio

Join ITA Houston - Italian Trade Agency and Space Foundation for the third episode of Spazio: "Italian New Space," streaming live on LinkedIn and Twitter on Thursday, July 20th, at 11:00 am EST (10:00 am CT).

Uncover the path through innovation of the most visionary Italian space entrepreneurs and learn more about Italy's impact on the News Space Economy. With our host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, VP of Space Commerce & Entrepreneurship at Space Foundation, this time you’ll find Francesco De Stefano, Co-Founder and CEO at CARACOL and Renato Panesi, CCO and Founder at D-Orbit.

Visit the landing page to watch the previous episodes or to sign up for the newsletter.

Vulcan Delayed Again

The space world will have to wait a little bit longer to see Vulcan fly.

The ULA rocket’s maiden launch has been delayed to Q4 while engineers fix a structural issue with its Centaur V second-stage rocket that caused May’s monstrous explosion on the test stand, ULA chief Tory Bruno announced yesterday.

Right of boom: On March 29, a hydrogen leak during ULA’s 15th Centaur V structural test caused a massive explosion at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. An investigation revealed the leak originated from the second stage’s forward dome.

ULA attributed the leakage to a higher-than-expected load on a particularly vulnerable section of the dome and weaker than anticipated welding.

Steel Band-Aid: ULA will add another layer of stainless steel to reinforce the area. The extra steel will add another 300 lbs of weight for the next flight and 150 lbs for future missions. The added mass will not impact its upcoming mission payloads.

Bruno anticipates that the qualification testing for the new steel bandage will be completed four to six weeks prior to the scheduled Q4 flight. The structural qualification of Centaur V is the rocket’s final hurdle.

The revised Vulcan mission schedule is below:

• Cert-1: Q4 2023. Vulcan will send two satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper to LEO and an Astrobotic lunar lander to the Moon.

• Cert-2: Q1 2024. The heavy-lift rocket will launch Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser to the ISS.

• Space Force: Q2 2024. After the first two certification missions, ULA will launch a USSF national security payload.

BE-4 explodes: On June 30, a Blue Origin BE-4 engine destined for a future Vulcan rocket exploded during an acceptance test. During the call, Bruno said that these anomalies are not unusual and he was confident that the incident will not impact their business as half a dozen engines have already been certified.

Nerd out on build rates: Blue Origin is currently building two BE-4 engines per quarter and will begin ramping up that production.

ULA aims to build 25 Vulcan rockets a year by 2025.

In Other News

• SpaceX closes in on a $150B valuation after a secondary share sale.

• India launched its Chandrayaan-3 lunar landing mission.

• House and Senate appropriators recommended keeping NASA FY24 budgets flat YoY. The most notable casualty may be the Mars Sample Return program. 

• NASA says June 2023 was the hottest June on record.

• JAXA's Epsilon S solid rocket engine exploded during testing.

• Sen. Chuck Schumer is introducing legislation to declassify government UFO records.

The View from Space

Star tails and city lights make this time-lapse picture from astronaut Don Pettit, which was taken as the ISS turned, a good candidate for a laptop background—if that honor hasn’t already been claimed by JWST’s latest release this week.