Gaining ground

Portals at dusk. Image: Northwood Space

Northwood Space is attempting to build the world’s largest ground-station network, and now it has a massive pool of capital to fund its buildout.

Today, Northwood announced the closing of $375M Series C, valuing the company at $2B, and bringing its total capital raised to $500M+.

a16z and DFJ Growth co-led the round, which included additional participation from Alpine Space Ventures, Washington Harbour Partners, Stepstone Activate, In-Q-Tel and others. Alongside the round, Northwood also secured a separate multi-year credit facility from HSBC Innovation Banking of undisclosed value.

Land expansion: The round will help Northwood expand its team, and deploy antennas at more ground stations around the world.

“With the largest ground networks today, you have hundreds of sites, and so in terms of what is immediately in the horizon for us: We plan to reach that and surpass that,” CEO Bridgit Mendler told reporters during a press call on Friday.

The Series C comes less than nine months after Northwood closed a $100M Series B, which has already funded significant expansion.

• In January, the company announced a three-year $49.8M contract with the Space Force to support the military’s Satellite Control Network, and Northwood has been delivering ground links from satellites in GEO under this contract.
• In June, Northwood unveiled Prism, a new parabolic dish designed for multi-gigabit links, and laid out a plan to grow its network to rival terrestrial Internet peering exchanges.
• In August, the company opened a 185,000 sq. ft. facility in Torrance, CA to support an increased production capacity for hundreds of ground antennas—across two product lines—per year.

I am speed: Unlike the hardware at traditional ground station sites, Northwood’s tech is designed to quickly deploy, and offer greater data links with a smaller physical footprint. In a recent test, Northwood arrayed 10 of its Portal ground antennas to achieve the same performance of a 20-foot dish.

Northwood’s antennas are also standardized and modular, allowing ground sites to expand quickly as capacity needs increase. As Northwood demonstrated, its hardware can be packed into standard freight containers, shipped anywhere the world, and turned on hours after arriving.

The speed allows Northwood to stand up new ground station sites in months—far quicker than industry standard. Northwood is also able to support satellite links through an API—so satellite operators can quickly reserve capacity.

Ultimately, Northwood’s aim is to standardize the entire network stack surrounding ground stations, so companies and defense users can benefit from a large network of shared infrastructure that can expand quickly.

“Our mental model is how can we go from the custom couch version of the world to the IKEA couch version of the world,” Mendler said. “Northwood is building the IKEA couches that you can ship out really easily and quickly.”

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Exclusive: Stellar Alpina Unveils Orbiter & Lunar Lander

Render of Monarch platform. Image: Stellar Alpina

Stellar Alpina is breaking free from its cocoon.

The Swiss startup is unveiling two new vehicles: a high-performance orbiter, Monarch, and a lunar lander, Morpho.

Stellar Alpina began as a propulsion startup focused on building rotating detonation rocket engines (RDREs). However, the company has pivoted to building vehicles that can actually put the engines’ efficiency gains to work.

Wingspan: Stellar Alpina cofounder Victor Elliesen called Monarch the “Swiss Army knife of orbital operations,” built for high-delta-V missions ranging from in-space transport to responsive defense.

• Monarch is designed for up to 6,000 m/s of delta-V, 1,000 kg of wet mass, and 200 kg of payload.
• Its engines are being developed to run on hydrogen peroxide and propane, which Elliesen called “green, but also storable” propellants.
• The team is targeting an in-orbit demo by 2029, depending on launch availability.

The spacecraft is also designed to be launcher-agnostic. Elliesen said that Monarch could hitch a ride on a European microlauncher—and still reach GEO.

Eventually, Stellar Alpina wants to run Monarch as a service. “We definitely want to be able to operate our own fleet of satellites and also resell the mobility-as-a-service aspect, where we could think of business models like a pricing based on the delta-V used,” Elliesen told Payload.

Meta-morpho-sis: Stellar Alpina released fewer details about its lunar lander, Morpho, which will use an upgraded version of Monarch’s architecture. Its timeline depends on how Monarch does in the market.

• Morpho is designed to deliver up to 50 kg of payload to the Moon.
• The vehicle is built to accommodate smaller, more flexible missions across the lunar surface.

Elliesen said that beyond ESA’s Argonaut lander, Europe has no clear commitment to commercial exploration on the lunar surface. He sees Morpho as a smaller complement to Argonaut.

“Europe hasn’t established a CLPS program yet,” Elliesen said, referring to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. “With the developments around Moon Base and on how the roadmaps are aligning, we do see more and more demand emerging.”

Chrysalis: Stellar Alpina isn’t the only company pairing RDREs with Moon-bound vehicles.

• Astrobotic, which was acquired by Voyager Technologies in July, also plans to bolt RDREs onto its Griffin lunar lander.
• Astrobotic also announced in April it had hotfired its own RDRE for a record 300 seconds.

Neither Astrobotic nor Stellar Alpina has flown an RDRE yet. Stellar Alpina is still in the prototyping phase, with 150+ engine tests under its wing. Next up for Stellar Alpina is a water-cooled engine to tackle one of the tech’s biggest hurdles—keeping it cool “so it doesn’t melt itself,” Elliesen said.

Hydrosat Unveils High-Res MWIR Thermal Capability

A rendering of Nyktòs. Image: Hydrosat

Hydrosat is zooming in on the thermal EO market.

Today, the company unveiled a new thermal mid-wave infrared (MWIR) program, called Nyktòs, which is designed to capture high-resolution imagery to complement the company’s lower-res, always-on, wide-swath imagery gathered through its planned Osiris constellation.

“With Osiris and Nyktòs, we have our own tip and cue capability,” CEO Pieter Fossel told Payload. “It’s really a family of products, or almost a Hydrosat ecosystem of products…It’s like having your iPhone and your MacBook. They do different things, but it can be nice to have two products from the same family.”

Fossel declined to share specifics on the expected resolution of the new Nyktòs imager, but told Payload it would be competitive with other thermal payload operators—namely SatVu, which offers imagery with 3.5-m resolution.

Heating up: The Nyktòs capability comes in response to growing demand for thermal EO data from European government customers. Unlike optical EO imagery, thermal EO payloads can capture data 24/7, allowing military customers to keep an eye on conflict zones even under the cover of darkness.

Hydrosat’s Osiris constellation aims to capture continuous imagery over a 340-km swath as each satellite flies overhead, allowing customers to spot changes on the ground without needing to task the satellites. With Nyktòs offering a higher-resolution perspective than Osiris, Hydrosat officials believe the company can lock down more of the market for satellite imagery—as customers can spot changes with Osiris, then task Nyktòs sats to take a closer look.

If you build it: To bring Nyktòs to life, Hydrosat is planning to open a new production facility in Europe. The aim is to inaugurate the company’s in-house manufacturing capacity in Europe, and form new relationships with European suppliers, to field a capability that can serve the sovereignty requirements of defense and government customers across the region.

While the company is unveiling Nyktòs as part of its bid to lock down a contract with the Greek government, according to Fossel, Hydrosat envisions Nyktòs supporting customers around the world—”targeted at defense and intelligence applications, although it will be great for industrial monitoring and things of that nature,” Fossel said.

Hydrosat is still shopping around for a location for its new facility, but Fossel told Payload it could be up and running next year, with Nyktòs payloads coming off the line as early as 2028.

The Week Ahead

All timings Eastern

Monday: SAE Media Group will begin the four-day Global MilSatCom conference in London, UK. The four-day CyberSat conference will begin outside DC. Rocket Lab is expecting to launch a Japanese radar satellite from Māhia, New Zealand at 11:41am.

Tuesday: Payload and Tectonic will host the two-day Space + Defense Investor Summit in Beverly Hills, CA. The Asia-Pacific Space Community Council will hold a three-day conference in Denpasar, Indonesia. Voyager Technologies will hold a Q3 teleconference call at 9am. SpaceX plans to launch the classified USSF-432 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 8:28pm.

Wednesday: The Secure World Foundation and Brazil’s space agency will hold a two-day summit for space sustainability in Brasilia, Brazil. The Mitchell Institute will host a webinar, featuring Space Force Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess, at 10am. The Nuclear Threat Initiative plans a livestreamed discussion about space weapons at 10am. The Planetary Society will hold a webinar about the US midterm elections in relation to space at 3pm.

Thursday: The two-day Maine Launch Summit runs in Portland, ME. NASA and CSA expect to conduct an ISS spacewalk, with the livestream starting at 6:45am. MDA Space and BlackSky Technology will discuss their Q3 results in separate teleconferences at 8:30am, while Redwire plans its own Q3 call at 9am. Karman Space & Defense will discuss its Q3 results in a teleconference at 4:30pm. Viasat will discuss its Q2 results in a teleconference at 5:30pm.

Saturday: KSC will begin a two-day airshow, MAX POWER, including a Moon Base update at 5pm.

In Other News

💸 Term sheet:

• SaxaVord Spaceport reportedly received £60M ($80.4M) in funding.
• Quantum Space and Inflection Point Acquisition are considering a business combination via SPAC.

📝 Contract report:

• Deutsche Bank and the European Investment Bank are partnering on space-investment opportunities valued at €560M ($627M).
• MDA Space and Thales Alenia Space agreed to proceed with supplying MDA antennas for the IRIS² sat program, in a contract valued at $100M+ CDN ($71.7M+).
• ESA signed contracts with Testnor, Norse Navigation, and Rift Dynamics for developing Norwegian PNT tech.
• China’s Landspace received a contract for launching a new spacecraft.
• ESI Motion will provide Lockheed Martin solar-array-drive electronics for the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture program.
• Kongsberg Satellite Services and Morehead State University began a strategic partnership looking at expanding a “lunar network” for comms and tracking.

💫 Other news:

• The UK has new defense-procurement regs, including for space tech.
• Google TPUs successfully completed an in-space demo for testing AI hardware.
• Rocket Lab Robotics plans to launch a sat-servicing robotic arm on NASA's Fly Foundational Robots demo mission NET late 2027.
• The FCC plans to auction 25 MHz of mid-band spectrum, and change D2D leasing rules.
• AFRL is tentatively planning to issue $30M in SBIR cislunar contracts in December.
• CNES is beginning ground qualification for the Callisto reusable rocket demo.
• OSHA is investigating the injury of a SpaceX Starlink worker.
• DoJ issued a motion concerning a Ligado Networks lawsuit.
• A federal judge made a ruling about Colorado’s lawsuit regarding Space Command HQ’s relocation to Huntsville, AL.
• Canada’s Concordia University created a kerosene-based gel, aiming for better space-fuel storage and control.
• NASA’s Voyager 1 recovered after a brief communications issue.
• Redwire launched a software platform for its Octopus payloads.
• The Space Force says Cape Canaveral launch demand is projected to pick up, after a slower 2026.
• Pixxel Federal’s CEO is now Allyson Jenkins.
• Open Cosmos announced Natasha Dillon as chief people officer.
• ispace said Anas Al-Shuwayer will be GM and managing director of its Saudi Arabia entity.
• Stellar Solutions named Bradley J. Rister as VP, commercial solutions sector.
• Sidus Space appointed Hassan R. Baqar to its board.
• Correction: Friday’s newsletter incorrectly stated the location of Blue Origin’s new facility. It is in Des Moines, WA.

The View From Space

Image: NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

A dark pillar looms in front of space gas in a new Hubble image. Hubble, as well as JWST, took images of the pillar in the Carina Nebula to learn more about how young stars shape their environment.

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