WASHINGTON — SpinLaunch, the company best known for work on an unconventional launch system, is rolling out plans to also develop a broadband satellite constellation.
The company announced April 3 that it signed a contract worth 122.5 million euros ($136 million) with smallsat manufacturer Kongsberg NanoAvionics to produce 280 satellites for a constellation called Meridian Space. The deal includes a $12 million investment in SpinLaunch by NanoAvionics’ parent company, Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace.
SpinLaunch has publicly been working for several years on a launch system that would use a centrifuge to accelerate vehicles to hypersonic speeds, effectively replacing the first stage of a conventional launch vehicle. However, at the same time it was also thinking about the satellites that could be launched by such a system.
“In 2020 was really when we doubled down and began investing more heavily in developing our own satellite constellation,” David Wrenn, chief executive of SpinLaunch, said in an interview. That included filings in 2021 with the Federal Communications Commission and International Telecommunication Union for spectrum.
SpinLaunch is now moving ahead with Meridian Space separate from its launch system, seeking a share of the strong demand for broadband satellite services. The company believes its technology can enable high performance using small satellites — each satellite will weigh 70 kilograms — that minimize the number of launches to deploy the constellation.
“The key differentiator is the technology enables a form factor that dramatically reduces the launch requirements and then ultimately benefits the system from a unit economics standpoint,” Wrenn said. “We’re also using the latest and greatest in terms of networking protocols, providing a very low latency and high reliability network.”
That includes the use of 5G non-terrestrial network (NTN) protocols, “military-grade” security and the ability to scale up the network. The initial set of 280 satellites would provide at least two terabits per second of sellable capacity, with the ability to add more satellites. Its filing with the FCC seeks authorization to deploy about 1,200 satellites operating at Ka-, Ku- and V-band frequencies.
Wrenn said SpinLaunch plans to focus on enterprise and government customers for Meridian Space, rather than offer consumer services like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s upcoming Project Kuiper system. Those customers would be able to use existing hardware, like ground terminals, for the system.
The satellites will operate in orbits of 830 kilometers in an arrangement that offers fixed ground tracks, rather than those that precess over time. That will allow the use of ground equipment that only needs to track satellites in one dimension, making those systems less expensive.
Wrenn said SpinLaunch picked NanoAvionics after a broad review of the overall satellite manufacturing sector. “I think they’re at a unique tipping point in their own evolution and history,” he said of NanoAvionics, as that company scales up satellite production and leverages resources from Konsgberg, which bought a majority stake in NanoAvionics in 2022.
“Together, we felt they were extremely strong combination, and ultimately, downselected them for those reasons,” he said. SpinLaunch itself will provide the communications payloads for the satellites that NanoAvionics will build.
SpinLaunch plans to start launching demonstration satellites for Meridian Space in 2026 with the initial launch of operational satellites no earlier than late 2027. “We would quickly ramp that up into full commercial service in the 12 to 24 months that follow,” he said.
Before the investment from Kongsberg, SpinLaunch last announced a $71 million Series B round in September 2022, and at the time said it had raised $150 million to date. Wrenn said the company will need to raise more money to fully develop Meridian Space.
“Right now, I would say we’re at the stage of demonstrating the satellites next year,” he said. That demonstration, as well as building up a customer backlog, “will be the necessary inputs to proceed with the capital fundraising.”
He said SpinLaunch has had “key engagements” with notable prospective customers who are interested in buying “hundreds of gigabits per second” of system capacity, but that the company was not announcing any agreements at this time.
Orbital launch system progress
SpinLaunch will turn to others to launch the initial Meridian Space constellation. “We’re currently engaged with a multitude of launch providers, and there’s certainly a number of available launch systems,” Wrenn said.
The company is not abandoning plans for its own unconventional launch system. SpinLaunch separately announced April 3 that it signed a lease agreement with The Aleut Corporation, an Alaska Native regional corporation, for land on Adak Island, located in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands at nearly 180 degrees longitude.
Wrenn said the agreement marked an “exploratory phase” for development of its Orbital Launch System, which would feature a centrifuge 100 meters in diameter. “We looked everywhere in the U.S., and thinking internationally, and Adak has a unique combination of features that make it a very attractive prospective launch site,” he said, including infrastructure from a former military base and commercial airline service.
From that location, he said, a launch system can reach a wide range of inclinations. There is also limited aircraft and maritime traffic to deal with.
While the lease agreement is in place, Wrenn said it will still be years before the company has a launch system operational there. The company will spend a year or more on initial assessments, including site surveys and environmental planning. Construction itself would take at least 36 months. “In total, we’re talking about several years to bring that system on line,” he concluded.
That system would also require additional funding. One potential source might be revenue from the Meridian Space constellation. “It ultimately depends on how the timeline plays out,” he said, noting that there are unspecified potential customers of the launch system that could accelerate its development.
