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WASHINGTON — NASA added three companies to a contract for launching smallsat missions, including one publicly traded company that has had recent financial struggles.
NASA announced Aug. 22 that it selected Arrow Science and Technology, Impulse Space and Momentus Space for its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract. That selection allows them to compete for task orders for launching specific missions, typically small satellites willing to accept higher levels of risk in exchange for lower launch costs.
Arrow Science and Technology provides satellite deployment services on other launch vehicles and orbital transfer vehicles. The company announced Aug. 6 it had acquired Xterra, a developer of satellite deployers, for an undisclosed sum that Arrow said would allow it to provide “comprehensive rideshare services.”
Impulse Space developed the Mira orbital transfer vehicle, launching it on its first mission last year with a second planned for later this year. The company announced in January it was developing a high-energy kick stage called Helios, and said Aug. 6 it would use that vehicle for a rideshare program to carry payloads to geostationary orbit.
Momentus has launched three of its Vigoride orbital transfer vehicles to date, most recently Vigoride-6 in April 2023 on SpaceX’s Transporter-7 rideshare mission. It has also launched payloads on other Transporter missions using a standard deployer, although in the most recent such mission on Transporter-9 in November three of the five satellites failed to deploy.
Momentus announced in January that it was delaying the launch of its next tug, Vigoride-7, which was to launch on Transporter-10. The company said it was postponing the mission while laying off 20% of its staff to reduce expenses. That came after the company laid off 30% of its staff around the middle of 2023.
Momentus has provided few details about its financial status since then. The company was late in filing its Form 10-K annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, delivering it in June, months behind schedule. It has also failed to file 10-Q quarterly reports with the SEC for the first and second quarters of 2024.
In an Aug. 15 filing announcing it would not deliver its second quarter 10-Q form on schedule, the company said the document, when ultimately filed, “will reflect certain steps the Company has taken to reduce expenses and financing transactions completed since June 30, 2024” and that its results for the first half of 2024 “will include significant impacts relating to those activities.”
Momentus announced July 18 that it had arranged a loan from an investment firm, Space Infrastructure Ventures, that will allow the company to borrow up to $2.3 million. The company added that six of its directors and officers also agreed to loan a combined $500,000 to the company.
The company said it would use the funding to support business development efforts, including bidding on satellite programs from the Space Development Agency and Space Systems Command. Momentus has developed a satellite bus based on its work on Vigoride.
Momentus has not provided an update on when, or if, it will fly Vigoride-7 or any future orbital transfer vehicles. The company noted in its 10-K filing that Vigoride-7 is complete and Momentus could use it on a future mission, convert it into a satellite bus or sell it to another company.
The selection of three companies that provide rideshare or orbital transfer reflects a continued shift in the VADR program from small launch vehicles to rideshare missions. Recent task orders awarded as part of VADR have primarily been for rideshare missions, either directly to SpaceX for launches on its missions or to companies like SEOPS, which arranged for the launch of two NASA tech demo cubesats on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 mission that launched Aug. 16.
NASA has used VADR for a few dedicated launches, including one pair of Rocket Lab Electron rockets for launches of the TROPICS cubesats in 2023 and another pair of Electrons for the PREFIRE cubesats earlier this year. NASA awarded a VADR task order to Blue Origin for the launch of the ESCAPADE Mars mission, currently scheduled to fly on the inaugural flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket this fall.
A NASA fact sheet about VADR, though, continues to emphasize the use of small launch vehicles. That fact sheet, linked to in the NASA press release about the addition of the three companies to the contract, listed five examples of venture-class launch vehicles available for such missions. Three of the five — Astra Space’s Rocket 3, Relativity Space’s Terran 1 and Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne — are no longer in service, and Virgin Orbit itself went bankrupt in 2023.