Getting around space, as it turns out, is kind of a big deal.
On Tuesday, Impulse Space, a company dedicated to improving space mobility, announced it has raised $500 million in Series D funding. Since it was founded five years ago by SpaceX veteran Tom Mueller, the company has now raised more than $1 billion.
“Timing is everything,” Mueller said in an interview about the new round of funding. By this, he means the company has found its way into a lot of markets.
Since 2001, the company has already flown three missions with a small spacecraft, Mira, which was first launched in 2023 with a novel propulsion system powered by non-toxic propellants, nitrous oxide and ethane. It has customers lined up. After Impulse announced its much larger “Helios” kick stage, demand was higher than anticipated from commercial customers. The US Space Force has become increasingly interested in satellite mobility, and now Impulse Space also believes it can provide landing services in the “1-ton-class” to NASA for its new Moon Base initiative.
Mobility is key
Company officials said they were not necessarily looking for new funding, but investors wanted them to capitalize on these emerging opportunities by growing to meet demand.
“It’s all happening now,” said Eric Romo, the company’s president and chief operating officer. “And I think that’s going to continue, and the market’s going to continue to find exciting new things. No one was talking about data centers in space a year ago, right? And so who knows what we’re talking about this time next year.”
The company is not the only firm in the United States that has recently been founded, or emerged from stealth, dedicated to improving mobility in space, especially transferring from low-Earth orbit to geostationary orbit, or moving within those orbits. The Space Force budget has grown significantly in recent years, and one of its mandates is countering spying and potentially hostile acts by Russian and Chinese spacecraft in these orbits. To that end, mobility is key.
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