A startup established three years ago to churn out a new class of high-power satellites has raised $250 million to ramp up production at its Southern California factory.<\/p>\n
The company, named K2, announced the cash infusion on Thursday. K2\u2019s Series C fundraising round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with additional funding from investment firms in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany. K2 has now raised more than $400 million since its founding in 2022 and is on track to launch its first major demonstration mission next year, officials said.<\/p>\n
K2 aims to take advantage of a coming abundance of heavy- and super-heavy-lift launch capacity, with SpaceX\u2019s Starship expected to begin deploying satellites as soon as next year. Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket launched twice this year and will fly more in 2026 while engineers develop an even larger New Glenn with additional engines and more lift capability.<\/p>\n
Underscoring this trend toward big rockets are other launchers like SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, United Launch Alliance\u2019s Vulcan, and new vehicles from companies like Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, and Firefly Aerospace. K2\u2019s founders believe satellites will follow a similar progression, reversing a trend toward smaller spacecraft in recent years, to address emerging markets like in-space computing and data processing.<\/p>\n
K2 is designing two classes of satellites\u2014Mega and Giga\u2014that it will build at an 180,000-square-foot factory in Torrance, California. The company\u2019s first \u201cMega Class\u201d satellite is named Gravitas. It is scheduled to launch in March 2026 on a Falcon 9 rocket. Once in orbit, Gravitas will test several systems that are fundamental to K2\u2019s growth strategy. One is a 2o-kilowatt Hall-effect thruster that K2 says will be four times more powerful than any such thruster flown to date. Gravitas will also deploy twin solar arrays capable of generating 20 kilowatts of power.<\/p>\n
\u201cGravitas brings our full stack together for the first time,\u201d said Karan Kunjur, K2\u2019s co-founder and CEO, in a company press release. \u201cWe are validating the architecture in space, from high-voltage power and large solar arrays to our guidance and control algorithms, and a 20 kW Hall thruster, and we will scale based on measured performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The US Space Force is funding the Gravitas demo mission. K2 says it has secured $500 million in \u201csigned contracts\u201d with commercial and US government customers.<\/p>\n
K2 says Gravitas is \u201con par with the largest satellites that have ever been produced.\u201d But K2 won\u2019t stop there. The firm\u2019s next satellite iteration, known as Giga, is specifically designed to fly on super-heavy rockets like Starship and New Glenn. Underpinning Giga is its ability to generate up to 100 kilowatts of power per satellite, several times more power than any spacecraft other than the International Space Station.<\/p>\n
The idea is that K2 will manufacture the satellite chassis, and customers will use it to accommodate their own unique payloads. Examples of missions Giga can support include AI computing, high-throughput networks, and mass-produced giant telescopes for astronomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur north star is simple,\u201d Kunjur said. \u201cIf we build these platforms well, we get to ask new questions about what\u2019s possible in orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n
K2\u2019s vertical integration strategy is different from legacy satellite manufacturers. Instead of buying components from a widely distributed supply chain, K2 says it has designed its own electric thruster, large solar arrays, radiation-tolerant avionics, reaction wheels, and more. The company flew a small mission in orbit earlier this year to test its flight computer and reaction wheel in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n
This approach will reduce manufacturing costs, according to K2. But K2 also aims to scale up production to build numerous Mega- and Giga-class satellites to further drive down prices. K2\u2019s founders believe there\u2019s high demand for these massive satellite platforms, and rocket companies will soon be ready to send them to orbit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A startup established three years ago to churn out a new class of high-power satellites has raised $250 million to ramp up production at its Southern California factory. The company, named K2, announced the cash infusion on Thursday. K2\u2019s Series C fundraising round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with additional funding from investment firms in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43528,"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-43525","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\/43525"}],"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=43525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}