![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/k2gravitas.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
K2\u2019s Gravitas satellite, set for launch next month, will test the company\u2019s Hall-effect thruster, solar arrays, and other systems.<\/p>\n
Credit:
\n K2<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
Putting the money in<\/h2>\n
Payloads, Purdy told Ars after his talk, are \u201cthe last frontier\u201d for scaling space missions. \u201cThe point is to get missions out the door as fast as possible. Two to three years is too slow. We\u2019ve got to get down to one week. I\u2019m not talking about super exquisite [payloads]. That\u2019s not most of our missions. The commercial industry, your Kuipers [Amazon LEO], your Starlinks, have sort of got the comm piece down, but we\u2019re still struggling in a lot of other stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
One kind of payload Purdy identified was infrared sensors. Infrared sensors often come with cryocoolers to chill detectors to temperatures cold enough to provide sensitivity to faint targets, such as distant missile plumes, fires, explosions, or other objects in space. The technology isn\u2019t as eye-catching as a rocket launch, but it will be key to many Space Force programs, including the Golden Dome missile defense shield backed by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remain convinced that we\u2019re going to think about the mission that we need, and we\u2019re going to need satellites out the door and launched and in orbit within the week, at scale,\u201d Purdy said. \u201cI\u2019m very convinced that that\u2019s the path that we\u2019re going to move down on the commercial and government side.\u201d<\/p>\n
The companies that come closest to that pace of satellite manufacturing are the ones Purdy mentioned: SpaceX\u2019s Starlink and the Amazon LEO broadband networks. SpaceX and Amazon produce multiple satellites per day, but the spacecraft are identical. The Space Force needs plenty of rockets and communications satellites, but it also needs payloads and sensors to ride those launch vehicles and produce the data to be routed through relay stations in orbit.<\/p>\n
Before President Trump ever uttered the words \u201cGolden Dome,\u201d the Space Force\u2019s Space Development Agency was already striving to deploy a network of at least several hundred government-owned missile-detection, tracking, and data-relay satellites. Those satellites have suffered delays due to supply chain issues, particularly long lead times and delays in satellite buses, infrared payloads, laser communication terminals, and radiation-hardened processors.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
Singing the blues<\/h2>\n
But the Space Force has lost access to one of the tools it used to help solve these problems. Many space mission components come from small businesses, and some parts come from overseas. The Space Force used STRATFIs, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants to pay companies for basic research, experimentation, and scaling up manufacturing capacity. STRATFIs, SBIRs, and STTRs provided seed funding for high-risk, high-reward research and development.<\/p>\n
Congress last year failed to reauthorize these programs, which are also used by NASA and other federal agencies. Opponents to a clean extension wanted legislation to cap how much funding can go to each grant recipient.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to get SBIRs and STRATFIs reauthorized, so I need the community\u2019s help to get that done,\u201d Purdy said. \u201cThere are some valid concerns that need to be addressed. All that needs to be addressed, but it affects the space industrial base a lot more than the other areas, and so I need everyone to kind of pile on and help get that done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Purdy took a victory lap by listing several STRATFIs that have so far yielded major results, at least for investors. K2 Space, a company developing high-power, low-cost satellite platforms, received $30 million in funding from the Space Force and Air Force in 2024. A year later, K2 closed a $250 million fundraising round at a company valuation of $3 billion. Apex Space, another startup looking to scale satellite manufacturing, received $11 million in strategic funding in 2024. A year later, Apex became a unicorn, exceeding a valuation of $1 billion. Impulse Space, which is working on in-space propulsion, received a STRATFI funding commitment from the Pentagon in 2024, helping propel the startup to a valuation of $1.8 billion.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
\u201cYears of SBIRs and STRATFIs have set the stage\u2026 We\u2019ve been doing that for three or four or five years, we\u2019ve produced a nice pool of 60 or 70 different companies that can help bid on all our upcoming new contracts, which is really nice,\u201d Purdy said.<\/p>\n
Under the Trump administration, the Defense Department has taken more steps to get cash in the hands of defense contractors. The Pentagon announced last month a $1 billion \u201cdirect-to-supplier\u201d investment in L3Harris to expand production capacity of US solid rocket motors. This gives the federal government a direct equity stake in L3Harris\u2019 missile business.<\/p>\n
A Trump executive order last month also excoriated the defense industry for ballooning executive salaries, stock buybacks, and systemic lethargy. \u201cYou see some strong language through executive order and other mechanisms to say, \u2018Hey, companies, you need to put in more CapEx yourselves. You need to kick in more yourselves.\u2019 We\u2019re no longer just going to provide you billions of dollars just for you to go build buildings,\u201d Purdy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s some threat language on the back end of that. You\u2019re going to do that, or else we\u2019re going to start cutting you off. We\u2019re going to start looking at other providers. That\u2019s out in the open and subject for debate. But there\u2019s a big carrot coming along with that, and that\u2019s multi-year procurements. Multi-year procurements are the carrot to allow the investing community to have some amount of confidence,\u201d Purdy continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not looking to be your R&D arm.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DALLAS\u2014The Space Force officer tasked with overseeing more than $24 billion in research and development spending says the Pentagon is more interested in supporting startups building new space sensors and payloads than adding yet another rocket company to its portfolio. The statement, made at a space finance conference in Dallas last week, was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}