K2 Space is betting that the future of space hardware will be big — really big.
Under this assumption, the construction of a large spacecraft began. Shipping costs will continue to fall As SpaceX's Starship and other heavy lifters come online, K2 Space will fly its first entire satellite mission under a $60 million Defense Department multi-payoff contract, K2 Space said Thursday. announced.
The mission, called Gravitas, will fly no earlier than February 2026. The satellite will fly on SpaceX's Transporter-16 rideshare mission, which will carry several payloads for national security. The spacecraft will operate in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) before raising its orbit to Medium Earth Orbit (MEO). MEO, between LEO and geosynchronous orbit, “has historically been an incredibly challenging orbit to operate,” K2 Space co-founder and CEO Karan Kunjur said in an interview.
To even get there, spacecraft operators typically need to equip their satellites with powerful propulsion systems or pay a premium for a launch that takes them directly into target orbit. Once there, the spacecraft must be able to survive the high radiation environment for the duration of the mission. But the Space Force is building assets in the MEO primarily for missile tracking and warning, and is also working to improve the Global Positioning System (GPS) network.
“MEO provides another level of endurance,” Kunjur said. “If you think about a multi-orbit strategy or a multi-orbit architecture, if you want to be resilient, what you want is to have assets in LEO, assets in MEO and assets in GEO. We at K2 really believe in that future.”
Kunjur, who founded the company with his brother Neel, called the deal a “step change” for the business. 60 million dollars with a 1:1:2 mix of government funding; Includes small business innovation research matching funds and private funding – meaning $30 million comes from private backers; That means the startup's $50 million Series A was nearly competitive; In February
The DoD was drawn to K2 Space's proposal for larger hardware, where the company's Mega class satellite would include a large 3-meter x 3-meter payload bay, at a cost of less than $15 million per satellite. less than three months. These figures represent a paradigm shift from traditional large satellite acquisitions.
Based in Torrance, California; The startup's innovative satellite architecture means many spacecraft components are built in-house. These include reaction wheels; flight computers; Includes solar arrays and a 20-kilowatt electric propulsion system. A cost-effective supply chain for these components simply does not exist; That's why K2 Space is setting up those manufacturing lines on its own, Kunjur said.
“The challenge is not just to design the performance that this mission requires, but to design it in a way that we can mass produce,” he said. “It's not like we're going to build one, Gravitas, use it for this mission, and then redesign it for mass production. No, when the first one comes off the line, the second one follows, and the third one follows, so we plan to build this.”
The company will fly a number of technology demonstrations on SpaceX's upcoming Transporter-12 mission in January, with a mission duration of no more than a few months.