In the middle of the night last week, geostationary satellite startup Astranis Space Technology Corp. dispatched its first product from its San Francisco headquarters on a cross-country road trip to Cape Canaveral, Florida.
(Bloomberg) — In the middle of the night last week, geostationary satellite startup Astranis Space Technology Corp. dispatched its first product from its San Francisco headquarters on a cross-country road trip to Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Astranis is one of the largest satellite startups in the US by valuation — $1.4 billion in its latest funding round — and is among a small number of players aiming to operate in the harsh conditions outside the earth’s atmosphere. It’s also the first company to be backed by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz in the growing private space industry.
Astranis’s nighttime shipment — attended by heavy security — marked a milestone for the seven-year-old company. It took the startup’s 300-person staff many millions of dollars and four years to build the inaugural product, which is about the size of an industrial dishwasher when its arms are folded in. After its launch early next month, the satellite will be part of what Astranis hopes will be a fleet of machines providing customers wireless broadband internet and connectivity for the US military.
Astranis Chief Executive Officer John Gedmark watched as a forklift loaded the satellite into a 20-wheel truck last week. “When it’s up in position and we’ve got radio tuned in, we’ll pop some champagne,” he said.
Venture investors spent more than $6 billion on space-related technology last year, up from less than $2 billion five years ago. Andreessen Horowitz, in particular, has expanded its investments in recent years to include more than two dozen startups it says “support the national interest” — including in public safety, manufacturing and aerospace. Satellite companies and other defense-related startups have received more attention as tensions between the US and China have escalated, and Russia made a geostationary satellite network one of its first targets after its invasion of Ukraine.
At more than 22,000 miles above Earth, geostationary satellites appear as permanent fixtures in the sky capable of providing continuous internet connectivity. Astranis satellites are roughly a 15th the size and cost of traditional models, the company said, and it has developed software to allow ground crews to change the frequencies of satellites already in the sky.
After the launch of its first machine on a SpaceX rocket, Astranis plans to put four more satellites on another SpaceX flight at the end of summer.
The company’s customers for its first satellites include Alaska’s Pacific Dataport, a Peruvian telecommunications provider and inflight connectivity company Anuvu Operations LLC. It’s also signed up additional, yet-to-be announced, commercial customers for future launches, and has been working with the US Department of Defense for several years. Last month, the US Space Force awarded a contract to Astranis worth more than $10 million to integrate a government-developed waveform into the company’s software, offering anti-jam capabilities to thwart a cyberattack.
Gedmark said Astranis aims to ultimately build two satellites a month and serve both commercial customers and the US government. He said Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s network stoked a sense of urgency for the company. “We all realized this is no longer theoretical,” Gedmark said. “Our adversaries are going after valuable geo-assets.”
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