Momentus Inc. (Momentus) operates as a U.S. commercial space company that offers transportation and infrastructure services to help enable the commercialization of space.
Satellite operators are the company’s principal customers and target customers. Services that the company provides or plans to provide include ‘last mile’ satellite transportation, payload-hosting, on-orbit satellite refueling, on-orbit inspection, on-orbit satellite maintenance, de-orbiting, debris removal, and other satellit...
Momentus Inc. (Momentus) operates as a U.S. commercial space company that offers transportation and infrastructure services to help enable the commercialization of space.
Satellite operators are the company’s principal customers and target customers. Services that the company provides or plans to provide include ‘last mile’ satellite transportation, payload-hosting, on-orbit satellite refueling, on-orbit inspection, on-orbit satellite maintenance, de-orbiting, debris removal, and other satellite-to-satellite service offerings.
The company plans to provide these services with Orbital Service Vehicles (‘OSVs’) that the company designs and manufactures. While the company plans to eventually operate a family of progressively larger and more capable OSVs, the company is focused on developing the first vehicle of the family, Vigoride, which will primarily operate in low-earth orbit (LEO). Vigoride, once further developed, tested and validated, will have the potential to deliver fast, versatile, and cost-effective transportation and infrastructure services to the company’s customers. The company conducted its inaugural test and demonstration mission with Vigoride in 2022 and began the company’s second test and demonstration mission in January 2023. The company plans to conduct two additional test and demonstration missions with Vigoride during 2023, subject to receipt of licenses and government approvals, and successful completion of the company’s efforts to get the system ready for flight.
The company’s transportation service offering will focus on delivering its customers’ satellites to precision orbits of their choosing. To accomplish this, the company plans to create a hub-and-spoke transportation network in partnership with leading launch service providers, such as SpaceX. Under this model, the company’s customers’ satellites would ‘ride share’ from Earth to space on a midsized or large rocket. The company’s OSVs would then provide ‘last mile’ transportation services from the rocket’s drop-off orbit to a custom orbit of the satellite operator’s choosing. The company plans to begin introducing additional services beyond ‘last mile’ transportation.
Planned Service Offerings
The company is developing its OSVs to provide safe, affordable, reliable, and regular in-space services to the company’s customers, including space transportation, payload hosting, and in-orbit servicing. The company has designed its Vigoride vehicle to deliver small customer payloads anywhere in LEO. However, the company also plans to design larger vehicles to carry larger payloads to more distant orbits.
If the company’s technology is fully developed and validated in the future, the company plans to provide the following infrastructure services to the space economy:
Space Transportation
The company is developing a space transportation service based on a hub-and-spoke model, which combines ride share launch on a medium or large rocket with last-mile delivery using one of the company’s OSVs. Under this model, the company’s customers will deliver their payload to the company a few months prior to launch for integration onto the company’s vehicle. Once the company has integrated its customers’ payloads, the company will then ship its vehicle, holding the customer payload fixture, to the launch site, where it will be integrated onto the rocket. The rocket will then transport the company’s vehicle to the drop-off orbit. After separation from the rocket, the company’s vehicle will transport its customers’ payloads to their chosen final orbit.
Hosted Payload
The company is developing a modular approach to satellite systems through the company’s hosted payload service. This service is designed to help the company’s customers avoid a meaningful capital outlay to design and manufacture a bespoke satellite as they would under traditional business models, which assumed tight integration of a given payload with its satellite bus.
The company has designed its transfer vehicles for modularity and ease of integration with customer payloads, and with a full suite of capabilities that the company’s customers will need on orbit. Under the company’s hosted payload model, the company’s vehicle, after transporting a customer payload to a specific orbit, would stay connected to the payload for the duration of its mission to provide continuous power, orbit maintenance, orientation, and communications to support telemetry, commanding, and downlinking of payload data.
In-Orbit Servicing
The company views in-orbit servicing of satellites as a quickly growing business opportunity. As the number of satellites in space increases, so does their need to be serviced. The company plans to design its future reusable vehicles to be capable of performing in-orbit servicing and are pursuing development activities that support this objective. Although the company is still in very preliminary stages for developing this technology, the company’s intention is to equip future vehicles with robotic arms and an ability to maneuver in close proximity to other spacecraft and dock or berth with them. Once fully developed, these capabilities could allow the company to offer a suite of different in-orbit services, such as inspection, refueling, life extension, re-positioning, salvage missions, maintenance and repair, and de-orbiting.
Service Vehicles
The company’s primary research and development objectives focus on the development of the company’s existing and future in-space transfer and service vehicles and related water plasma propulsion technology.
Vigoride is the first vehicle that the company is developing. Once fully developed, tested and validated in space, the company expects Vigoride will be sufficient to meet the company’s initial operating plan of offering in-space transportation services to small satellites in LEO, as well as payload-hosting services. The success of the company’s in-space infrastructure services business will depend on the company’s ability to successfully and regularly deliver customer satellites into custom orbits. The company has ground-tested several Vigoride vehicles in preparation for flight, including, where appropriate, subsystem- and system level environmental testing, performance testing, and life testing in relevant environments, and have launched two of these vehicles into space.
Vigoride is intended to transport up to 750 kg of customer payload in LEO, although the company’s payload capacity will likely be lower in most common configurations. The company has set the delta-v and host power objectives for Vigoride at 2 km/sec and 1 kW, respectively, which the company can achieve a few years into the company’s product roadmap.
The company conducted its inaugural test and demonstration mission with Vigoride during 2022 and began the company’s second test and demonstration mission in January 2023. The company plans to conduct two additional test and demonstration missions with Vigoride during 2023, subject to receipt of licenses and government approvals, and successful completion of the company’s efforts to get the system ready for flight.
The company’s 2022 and 2023 launches were and are intended to be test and demonstration missions. While the company has carried and will continue to carry relatively few paying customers on these early missions, the primary goals of the company’s 2022 and 2023 missions were and are to test Vigoride in space, learn from any issues that the company may encounter and incorporate lessons learned into future Vigoride vehicles as the company seek to ultimately certify a design for production. While the company conducts an extensive ground-test campaign to identify potential problems with each of the company’s vehicles prior to launch, the company has encountered anomalies with its vehicles and their operation in space, and the company may encounter additional issues and anomalies in the future. Depending on the nature of issues and anomalies the company may encounter, the company’s schedule for future launches and other planned activities could be adversely affected. There can be no assurance that the company will not experience operational or process failures and other problems during the company’s test and demonstration missions or on any other mission. Any failures or setbacks could harm the company’s reputation and have a material adverse effect on the company’s business, financial condition and results of operation.
Because the company’s technologies have not yet been fully tested, the company’s service offerings to its customers during the test and development phase of the company’s program are limited. To reflect this, the company provides discounts to customers on these early missions relative to the price the company intends to eventually charge for its transportation services.
Early Vigoride vehicles will not be reusable, meaning that the company will de-orbit them following delivery of their customer payloads. However, the company plans to make its vehicles capable of reuse such that, upon delivery of their payloads, they will be able to remain in space to conduct follow-on missions. Establishing reusable vehicles will require significant additional research and technological developments. The company’s choice of water as a propellant will help with the creation of reusable vehicles because water can be stored without special conditions, other than ensuring lines and tanks do not freeze or become obstructed with ice, for an indefinite amount of time and can be pumped easily. Additionally, water is safe and non-hazardous relative to commonly used propellants, such as cryogenic components and hypergolic toxic fuels for chemical propulsion, or highly pressurized noble gases (such as Xenon or Krypton) for electrical propulsion.
Beyond Vigoride, the company envisions bringing larger vehicles to market. These vehicles will be similar to the company’s Vigoride vehicle, but with larger structures, larger solar arrays, and more powerful propulsion systems in order to carry progressively larger payloads progressively farther from Earth.
Early Development Activities
Momentus has continued to evolve and improve its microwave electro-thermal (‘MET’) technology since development began in 2017. The company’s first-generation X-band thruster, which operated at 30 Watts, was flown aboard a demonstration mission called El Camino Real in mid-2019. During this mission, Momentus launched its first MET into space as a hosted payload on a nanosatellite. The mission’s objective was to demonstrate the MET’s ability to produce water plasma in space by performing 100 one-minute firings. The MET was instrumented with temperature, pressure and radio-frequency (RF) reflected power sensors to infer the presence of water plasma, which if detected, would indicate that the water propellant was flowing into the thrust chamber and radio frequency energy was being absorbed by the water. Failure of the host satellite in November 2019 prematurely terminated the demonstration after only 23 of the planned 100 firings of the thruster had been performed, including 12 hot firings with microwave power turned on and 11 cold firings with the microwave turned off. While a pump issue significantly restricted flow of water into the thruster during nine of the 12 hot firings, preventing plasma-generation, the three hot firings that did have water present were found to have produced plasma. Although pressure and temperature data did not provide sufficient information to either confirm or contradict plasma presence, the reflected power data collected during the three hot firings with water present to be sufficient to conclude that plasma was produced. Reflected power data collected during these three in-space firings closely matched ground test data collected by similar or identical sensors and associated with observed successful firings of the MET where water plasma was generated. The company has incorporated potential solutions to the aforementioned pump issue and other observed weaknesses from El Camino Real into subsequent iterations of the company’s propulsion system design, pressure sensor selection and vehicle integration and test process.
The Vigoride vehicle was re-designed in 2020 to increase its payload capacity. Vigoride 2 was designed to use a pair of C-band MET, which would each operate at 550 Watts at the target thrust level and approximately 75% of the target specific impulse (ISP) of the company’s internal performance goal. This C-band thruster has undergone extensive development over the last several years. This early generation of the thruster was life tested to a reduced mission of 350 cycles (firings) and 35 hours of accumulated firing.
While Vigoride 1 and Vigoride 2 are both fully built and ground-tested, the company does not intend to fly either vehicle in space. Both will be retained in storage and lessons learned from their production and ground-testing will be incorporated into future Vigoride vehicles that the company intends to fly.
Inaugural Mission
Vigoride 3 was the first OSV that the company launched into space. It was built with an upgraded 750-Watt version of the C-band MET with the intention of producing greater thrust compared to Vigoride 1 and Vigoride 2.
On May 25, 2022, the company launched Vigoride 3 to low-earth orbit aboard the SpaceX Transporter-5 mission. In addition to Vigoride 3, Momentus used a second port on the same SpaceX mission to fly a third-party deployer from a partner company. On May 25, 2022, Momentus used the third-party deployer to place its first customer satellite in orbit.
On May 26, 2022, upon establishing two-way contact between Vigoride 3 in low-earth orbit and a ground station on Earth, Momentus discovered that Vigoride 3 had experienced certain anomalies after its launch, primarily relating to its deployable solar arrays, which provide power to the spacecraft and its subsystems. The company quickly worked to address the anomalies, identify root causes and pursue solutions to be implemented in advance of future missions.
The company determined that Vigoride 3’s deployable solar arrays, which are produced by a third party, and are folded and stowed during launch, did not operate as intended once in orbit. This resulted in low power and communications issues with the spacecraft. Meanwhile, the spacecraft's fixed, body-mounted solar panels appeared to have worked as intended and were able to provide some power to the spacecraft. The company and the producer of the solar arrays identified a mechanical issue as the root cause of the deployable arrays not operating as intended. The company also identified the root cause of the anomalies that it experienced with other spacecraft systems during the low-power state.
On May 28, 2022, Momentus was able to deploy two customer satellites from Vigoride 3 (of nine total customer satellites onboard Vigoride 3). The company then continued efforts to deploy other customer satellites. While Momentus initially established two-way communications with Vigoride 3, it was unable to continue such two-way communication given the spacecraft's low-power state.
While Momentus was unable to re-establish two-way communication with Vigoride 3, it continued to broadcast commands to the spacecraft from ground stations on Earth, including commands to deploy customer satellites. Additionally, Vigoride 3 was equipped with a mechanism designed to autonomously deploy customer satellites in the event of a sustained loss of communications with ground stations. Vigoride 3 deployed five additional customer satellites during July and August 2022 for a total of seven. The company was unable and remains unable to confirm the deployment of the last two customer satellites that Vigoride 3 was carrying. In total, Momentus deployed eight customer satellites in low-earth orbit during its inaugural mission, comprising seven satellites from Vigoride 3 and one satellite from the third-party deployer system.
The company incorporated improvements identified during its inaugural mission in advance of its first follow-on mission and other planned follow-on missions.
First Follow-On Mission
Vigoride 5 is the lead ship in the company’s Block 2.2 configuration, which features an upgraded propulsion system, a modular payload bay that allows fuel tanks to be substituted for customer payloads depending on specific mission requirements, upgraded payload-hosting capabilities and a more efficient structural design compared to previous Vigoride vehicles. Vigoride 5 was the second OSV that the company launched into space.
On January 3, 2023, the company launched Vigoride 5 to low-earth orbit aboard the SpaceX Transporter-6 mission. The mission is ongoing and Vigoride 5 is in good health as it undergoes a deliberate commissioning process in preparation for on-orbit operations. On Vigoride’s first orbital pass, Momentus confirmed that both solar arrays were deployed, and the vehicle was generating power and charging its batteries. While Vigoride 5 is carrying two customer payloads, the primary mission objective is to test the spacecraft on orbit, learn from any issues that are encountered and implement lessons learned on future Vigoride vehicles and missions.
Relationships with Launch Providers
The company has designed its vehicles to be compatible with most rockets, and the company has not entered into exclusivity arrangements with any single launch provider.
As of December 31, 2022, the company entered into several launch services agreements, including with SpaceX, Relativity Space, ABL Space Systems and Gilmour Space. Beyond these providers, the company remains in active dialogue and the company has strong relationships with Blue Origin, ULA, RFA, and several other rocket providers.
The company has developed a strong relationship with SpaceX with which the company maintains an innovative rideshare partnership. Momentus could unlock a market for SpaceX by consolidating small satellites on the company’s transport vehicles once the company has fully developed, tested and validated them in space, which will then be launched by SpaceX on its Falcon-9 rideshare missions, and delivered by Momentus to the small satellites unique, respective orbits.
The company has relationships with several launch providers including SpaceX, Relativity Space, Gilmour Space, Blue Origin, ABL Space Systems, United Launch Alliance (ULA), Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) and several other rocket providers.
Sales and Marketing
The company plans to scale and accelerate its sales and marketing efforts and leverage industry partnerships to grow its customer base using a global network of sales professionals. Additionally, if the company can successfully execute on its missions, the company expects existing customers to exercise contract options and expand their contracts with the company for the deployment of their future satellites. The company plans to provide new service offerings and sales models over time to increase market share and grow the total addressable market for the company’s in-space infrastructure services assuming the company can successfully execute on the company’s missions and business plan.
Regulatory
The regulations, policies, and guidance issued by the Federal Communications Commission (‘FCC’) apply to the operation of the company’s transport vehicles.
As a participant in launch activities, the company is indirectly subject to the license requirements of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (the ‘FAA’) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (the ‘AST’).
The company’s orbital infrastructure business is subject to, and the company must comply with, stringent U.S. import and export control laws, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (the ‘ITAR’) of the U.S. Department of State and the Export Administration Regulations (the ‘EAR’) of the Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development expenses were $41.7 million in the year ended December 31, 2022.
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