Lux Aeterna has just received a little more money to take recycling in a new direction.
The Colorado-based company announced today (March 10) that it has raised $10 million, which it will use to accelerate the development of fully reusable satellites — technology that it believes will be as transformative as reusable rockets.
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Reusable rocket technology is key to SpaceX’s dominance of the launch market these days, allowing it to Elon Muskthe company to fly often and relatively cheaply. Reuse of satellite will also be a big cost saving, according to Taylor.
“It’s not just the cost of building another satellite, it’s also the supply chain and the capital expenditure of building another satellite,” he told Space.com.
“In general, the idea of refurbishing something and optimizing that refurb really reduces not only the unit cost, but also the supply chain burden — everything you have to make from scratch for each vehicle,” added Taylor, who previously worked with Starlink and Amazon Leo satellite projects at SpaceX and Amazon respectively. “So it’s really compounded on just the cost.”
Reusable satellites will also give customers much greater flexibility, he said, allowing them to fly payloads not designed for (and limited by) typical spacecraft operational lifetimes.
“You can design your missions around the payload, as opposed to designing the payload around a bus whose maximum life is five to seven years in low earth orbit,” Taylor said. “So it really opens up these new mission architectures, in addition to obviously covering the downmass market, which is manufacturing in space, resupplying cargo, hypersonic — things like that.”
Other companies are also active in this wider market. For example, Varda Space has implemented more assignments with its W-series return capsules, which it bills as orbital minifactories. And Outpost aims to provide accurate cargo delivery and manufacturing services in space with its range of scalable vehicles. But Lux Aeterna excels by focusing on satellite missions with full reusability, Taylor said.
The recently announced funding came via an oversubscribed seed round, which was led by Konvoy with participation from Decisive Point, Cubit Capital, Wave Function and other investment firms. Lux Aeterna raised $4 million in a “pre-seed” round last year, bringing its total investment to date to $14 million.
The new funds will go towards the development and production of Delphi, Lux Aeterna’s prototype reusable satellite platform. The vehicle, which is about 3.6 feet (1.1 meters) wide and weighs 440 pounds (200 kilograms), is slated to fly for the first time in early 2027, on one of SpaceX‘s Transporter rideshare mission.
Although that mission is primarily a technology demonstrator, Delphi will carry a variety of payloads up (and back down to Earth). Lux Aeterna is not releasing details of the manifesto, but “it includes a cross-section of civil defense and commercial customers all participating in this mission,” Taylor said.
The Delphi is a pathfinder, not a production vehicle; Lux Aeterna’s fleet will consist of larger and more capable satellite platforms. The next generation spacecraft will fit on top of what is currently available rocketsTaylor said, while after that it will likely be sized to fly on SpaceX Spaceship mega rocket.
If all goes according to plan, Lux Aeterna will have dozens of satellites in operation by 2030 and “in the order of hundreds” by 2035, he added.
“Lux Aeterna is the first company to build a return fleet that truly compresses mission timelines and costs,” Josh Chapman, managing partner of Konvoy, said in the same statement.
“With a team that has launched thousands of satellites, they have the unique expertise required to build a fleet of re-entry satellites that will create a new category in the space industry, yet one that feels familiar to airline fleets on Earth,” Chapman added. “We think they’re about to unlock a whole new market for space missions that simply hasn’t existed until now.”
