Companies like RedWorks, Deep Space Industries, Made in Space and Planetary Resources have breathtaking ambitions with their business plans that involve space-based initiatives. We take a look at some of the hottest new companies entering satellite and what they are looking to bring to our industry.
Over the last few years, space has suddenly become hip with the likes of Spacebook, Google and Facebook resonating with young Millennials attracted by the possibilities of working on space-based initiatives. In Silicon Valley, there are many start-up companies with lofty goals and big ambitions. But, who are these companies and why should you be aware of them? We take a look at some of the hottest new companies entering satellite and what they are looking to bring to our industry.
RedWorks has the ambition to create shelters that will enable human colonization of the Solar System, starting with Mars. The California startup has taken lessons from ancient architecture, structures found in nature, the micro-home movement, and NASA studies to approach space habitats from a wholly unique perspective that will make the best use of additive manufacturing technologies.
Keegan Kirkpatrick, founder and team lead at RedWorks, says the company is working on a project it is tentatively calling “Brick Zero,” which he describes as the first 3-D printed building material made wholly from onsite resources on Earth. “This is where we see the prime market, where this technology can be entered into — at least terrestrially, speaking. This will allow us to develop the technology that we want to eventually adapt to build infrastructure in space,” he adds.
It is a lofty goal but Kirkpatrick says RedWorks has got a lot of “positive feedback” both from people in the industry and the general public as well. “Whenever we present people with this idea that our technology would make it possible for anyone and everyone to set up a habitat on Mars, or for a company to be able to take advantage of resources in space ... the response is always one of excitement at the possibilities that affords,” he says.
Kirkpatrick highlights the shifts he has seen in the past five years toward reusable launch technologies and in-space services, citing what he sees as a grander shift toward what could be an economic boom in space. “[This] really has lit a fire under us to try and develop the technology required to make that boom possible and more accessible for more companies,” he says.
RedWorks’ potential customer base could actually be two of the companies featured in this article: Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources. Kirkpatrick also believes that other companies “will come out of the woodwork” as reusable launch technology continues to develop.
“Right now, we are definitely more focused on our terrestrial side of development, but we see ourselves as being able to service space customers by providing them the basic infrastructure tools. Think of us as the caterpillar of space, if you will: the company that provides the basic hardware to be able to build the material these companies need to operate on new worlds,” adds Kirkpatrick.
RedWorks began as an entry into the NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge. Having made it to the finals in New York, the team was able to discuss and talk with others about some of their ideas.
“Our idea of being able to build just with on-site materials, to be able to do everything from the moment you got there — and that the only thing you would need to bring with you to build a colony on Mars would be biomass, and the printer. In other words: the people who have to live there, the plants and animals to grow and supply their food supply, and beyond that you build everything else on-site. That resonated with people on a level that we thought was a very ‘oh duh’ moment. And we thought, ‘of course we’re going to do that,’” Kirkpatrick says.
“And then pretty soon we’re looking at business plans, and then pretty soon we’re talking lawyers, and then pretty soon we’re talking to potential developers out in the Middle East and customers who want to potentially make use of our technology for terrestrial applications,” he adds.
This is yet another exciting company to come out of Silicon Valley. Deep Space Industries (DSI) is getting ready to launch its satellites next year with the plan to do a resource assessment on an asteroid. The company is developing a lot of the technologies it needs, both for advanced spacecraft to work around the asteroid, and for everything to take the asteroid apart and make it useful for other people, according to Daniel Faber, CEO of DSI.
While Faber highlights other companies working on asteroid research, where he says DSI comes into the equation is on the technology side. The company is building very advanced nanosatellites and micro satellites. DSI has commercial products to provide mobility to satellites in orbit, such as orbital thrust systems, some high reliability avionics, and proximity operation sensors — a lot of things that are a really advancing the capabilities of small orbital spacecraft. Faber says this is “the company’s business right now” and is selling these spacecraft and that equipment.
“We have sort of a leadership because we’re driven by our ambitious goals, and we end up building technology that is more capable, more robust, smaller and lighter and just generally aligned with what customers in Earth orbit are looking for in the next generation of satellites in terms of capability, launch constellations or those kinds of things,” he adds.
DSI has adopted what it calls “a very rational approach” to financing. Faber says in order to execute its business plan, the company does not need extremely large amounts of capital up front. Where it needs capital is to help build the capability of its team and products to sell into the marketplace, creating revenue growth and momentum. Faber says DSI is now “well along” this path.
The initial ambition is to get its first missions to asteroids. Its likely customers are companies operating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), doing things like remote sensing, signal detection, communications, etc. “So it is really companies that are building new, small constellations that are testing out things or scientific experiments and whatever in LEO. So we’ve started building those products and shipping them. We’ve sold several spacecraft, several thruster systems. We are already in the marketplace winning business,” says Faber.
So, how does Faber see the business developing over the next 10 years? He believes in 10 year’s time, you can expect to be returning materials from the asteroid to Earth orbit, and making that commercially available as part of a growing space-based supply chain industry. DSI is going to be developing the technologies we need to realize this and also to use those materials.
Made In Space, is developing additive manufacturing technology for use in the space environment. By manufacturing space assets in space, as opposed to launching them from Earth, the company plans to accelerate and broaden space development while also providing unprecedented access for people on Earth to use in-space capabilities. The biggest thing the company is working on right now is Archinaut, an on-orbit manufacturing and assembly system. Archinaut can additively manufacture parts, extended structures, and then it has the robotic capability to assemble them together. “This provides, if you think of building imaging systems, large dishes or connecting two large structures on orbit or, maybe repurposing some existing satellite systems,” says Spencer Pitman, head of product strategy at Made in Space.
Pitman says Archinaut’s phase one is set to be complete late next year, probably in November. “Archinaut is a capability; it is a set of technologies. Some of those technologies we’ll demonstrate on-orbit, some of them we’ll demonstrate here,” he says. After 2019, Pitman expects Made In Space to launch Free Flyer, an integrated system of the basic mix of these technologies.
Developing an interesting range of technologies could lead to Made in Space having a diverse customer base among the satellite community. Pitman says the main customers for Archinaut would be satellite operators that own assets that are looking toward the end of their life. “We think that if they have a system that gives a billion dollar asset that’s falling down a new reason to live — another 10, or 15 years — then that’s a pretty compelling thing, rather than them having to create a new billion dollar asset,” he says.
And then there are a number of nascent space technologies that are on the horizon when you talk about commercial space stations and further usage of the station that would benefit from having these large structure capabilities on board.
“You have these assets that a tremendous amount has been invested in already, and this is a way for designers or space companies to think about life-extending use cases for their assets. So we just think that’s a pretty unique value proposition, and in our customer research we’ve gotten pretty good responses from that,” he says.
Planetary Resources is focusing its efforts on sensors that are able to detect the composition and presence of resources. This ranges from thermographic infrared, to hyper spectral imaging. The company is developing these sensors and creating what it considers a very low cost, deep space platform that will allow it to get out to near-Earth asteroids and measure their resources.
The company has had Research and Development (R&D) support from the likes of NASA and DARPA, among others. Yet, Lewicki points out Planetary Resources is actively developing capabilities for the commercial market, so this could be Fortune500 companies. In the remote sensing area, the company has the opportunity to measure the Earth from space and that’s taken the interest of companies like Bayer crop science and others in that area, according to Lewicki.
In terms of how the company is being financed, it now has a relationship with the government of Luxembourg, which has invested 25 million euros into the company as well as further funding for R&D activity related to the company. “That along with all of the other investment that we’ve had in our institutional financing round really sets us on good footing to continue to grow and develop and deploy the company’s capability,” says Lewicki.
Lewicki admits Planetary Resources is fully aware that creating an asteroid mining business is perhaps one of the greatest challenges that a business could undertake today. “But that is what is so inspiring about it to us. Our team really sees the opportunity, and this is the team that is not just the employees, the founders but also the investors — of being able to make progress on this with each satellite launch, with each contract, with each new technology — of doing activities that push closer toward this long-term goal of an economy that benefits from having access to resources in space,” adds Lewicki.
There have been many healthy discussions as to whether we should use terms like “New Space” and “Old Space.” So, we asked executives of these exciting new companies to define what “NewSpace” means to them.
“As satellite networks continue to grow with the Earth imaging boom, there is a growing need for in-space servicing technologies. Not just for repair, but essentially to refuel, maintain, and keep hardware flying much longer than has been able to be achieved beforehand. And part of what’s going to help make that possible is the shift toward asteroid mining. To keep all those satellites flying, we need to take advantage of fuel and resources available on the near-Earth asteroids. That is the immediate future of New Space,” says Keegan Kirkpatrick, founder and team lead at Redworks.
Spencer Pitman, head of product strategy at Made in Space adds, “My exposure to the idea of New Space versus Old Space, or maybe “Traditional Space” as a nice way to put it, is that New Space is the young startups that are coming in and bringing new life into an industry, but I think that’s actually kind of a mischaracterization,” he says.