K2 space is betting that the future of space hardware will be big – really big.
The startup is building a massive spaceship based on the premise that launch costs will continue to fall as SpaceX's spacecraft and other heavy vehicles come online. It appears the Space Force is taking its share of that gamble, with K2 Space announcing Thursday that its first full satellite mission would carry a number of Department of Defense payloads in a $60 million contract.
This mission, called Gravitas, will not fly until February 2026. The satellite will fly as part of SpaceX's Transporter-16 rideshare mission, where it will carry several national security payloads. The spacecraft will conduct operations in low Earth orbit (LEO) before raising its orbit to medium Earth orbit (MEO). MEO, which sits between LEO and geosynchronous orbit, has “historically been an incredibly difficult orbit to operate,” Karan Kunjur, co-founder and CEO of K2 Space, said in an interview.
To achieve this, spacecraft operators typically must either equip their satellites with powerful propulsion systems or pay extra for a launch that takes them directly into the target orbit. Once there, the spacecraft must be able to survive a high radiation environment for the duration of the mission. But the Space Force has developed assets in the MEO, mainly for missile tracking and warning, but also to improve the global positioning system (GPS) network.
“MEO provides another level of resilience,” Kunjur said. “If you think about a multi-orbit strategy or a multi-orbit architecture, what you want, if you want resilience, is to have assets in LEO, assets in MEO and assets in GEO. At K2, we truly believe in this future.
Kunjur, who founded the company with his brother Neel, called the deal a “step change” for the company. The $60 million in funding includes a 1:1:2 mix of government funds, small business innovation research matching funds, and private funds. That means $30 million is coming from private backers, an amount that nearly rivals the startup's $50 million Series A that closed. in February.
Venture capitalists and the DoD were attracted to K2 Space's proposition for big hardware — the company's Mega-class satellite has a massive 10-by-10-foot payload bay — for a cost less than $15 million per satellite, with lead times of less than three months. These figures represent a paradigm shift from the traditional purchase of large satellites.
The Torrance, Calif.-based startup's new satellite architecture means a substantial percentage of the spacecraft's components are built in-house. These include things like jet wheels, flight computers, solar panels and the 20-kilowatt electric propulsion system, which will be among the most powerful ever put into orbit. The supply chain for these components at a cost-effective price simply doesn't exist, Kunjur said – which is why K2 Space is setting up these manufacturing lines itself.
“The challenge is not only to design it to achieve the performance required by this mission, but also to design it so that it can be mass produced,” he said. “It's not like we're going to build one, use it for Gravitas, this mission, and then redesign it for mass production. No, the idea is to construct this so that when first comes out of line, second is right behind him, third is behind him, and so on.
The company will also fly several technology demonstrators during SpaceX's next Transporter-12 mission in January, for a mission duration that is not expected to exceed a few months.
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