The Uber of Space
Why we invested in Atomos Space
The Status Quo
Imagine flying, but you had to walk from the airport to your destination when you landed.
That’s the current reality for satellites.
Launch vehicles, which run at a bargain cost of ~$62 million thanks to SpaceX, cater to specific orbits — primarily a function of their size and launch site — but many satellites, like a passenger on a plane, are continuing elsewhere. A satellite must carry enough propellant to make the trek under its own power to achieve its final orbit. Keep in mind that propellant is usually a majority of the mass of items we send up to space, thus the cost. Our own portfolio company Astranis, if it hadn’t landed a ride on an upcoming Falcon Heavy launch, would’ve taken months to climb from LEO (99 to 1,200 miles “up”) to GEO (~22,000 miles). Flying on a Falcon Heavy may be convenient, but it’s expensive and wasteful — that’s a heck of a lot of mass for a one-way trip!
That’s where Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs) come into play. Some call them space tugs. We think of them as orbital Uber. There are a few emerging players, but our money’s on Atomos Space.
Enter Atomos
Founded in 2017 by Vanessa Clark (CEO) & William Kowalski (COO), Atomos Space was born in Denver, CO, as one of the many private space companies trying to make humanity a multi-planetary species through advanced nuclear propulsion. They are developing high-powered electric propulsion spacecraft called OTVs to enable companies to access and move other spacecraft from one orbit to the other.
Vanessa received her Master’s & Bachelor’s from the University of Sydney in Aerospace Engineering and Management. She researched spacecraft propulsion systems at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), eventually relocating to Colorado for Lockheed Martin to work on government satellites and human spaceflight projects — she led the design, testing, and operation of spacecraft propulsion systems for NASA and commercial customers. She has been an avid proponent of nuclear propulsion, but we’ll come back to that later.
William graduated from SUNY Empire State College with a BS in Finance. He has over a decade of experience in finance and is an absolute aerospace junkie. The two met in Denver, founded Atomos, and later started dating (yes, in that order!). Now they are married and make an incredible team.
With an Atomos constellation on-orbit, instead of scheduling multiple launches to insert a variety of satellites into various orbits and/or bringing enough propellent with them to hoof it on their own, providers can plan a single launch into LEO, then an Atomos OTV can sync up with the customer and pull each unit into its final orbit.
Their future lineup includes:
- Quark: A small, agile OTV that is ubiquitous and an autonomous rendezvous spacecraft. It can relocate large satellites in GEO and raise or dispose of small satellites in LEO.
- Gluon: A modular service vehicle that can interchangeably carry tens of satellites and ammonia propellant. Gluon is currently sized to refill Quark. However, Atomos is developing much larger variants that can carry thousands of kilograms of fuel to orbit for use with Proton and Neutron.
- Proton: A high-powered OTV that uses ammonia electric propulsion to deploy large-scale constellations in LEO and transfer medium-sized payloads to GEO or other higher orbits.
- Neutron: A OTV powered by low-enriched Uranium fission power. This spacecraft will be capable of rapid transfer in Earth orbit and deep space missions for NASA, where it can take large satellites & cargo to GEO or the moon.
Their computer-vision-based real-time rendezvous (a key Atomos differentiator) will mean they don’t need a client’s satellite specs in detail, which is compelling to most satellite companies and particularly to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) for obvious reasons. Their team has extensive rendezvous experience, having previously led development on some very well-known missions. Unlike certain competitors, Atomos’ OTVs will also be reusable.
Their OTVs can significantly reduce the cost of launch, which increases the cadence of reusable launch vehicle (RLV) companies like SpaceX. Just one Neutron could perform five heavy LEO to GEO transfers, and refueling their OTVs doesn’t require pressurant gas or pumps.
Why Now?
The modernization of launch systems for RLVs and the oncoming deployment of satellite constellations is rapidly propelling the space economy. There has been a surge of LEO internet connectivity — companies such as Starlink, OneWeb, Telesat, Amazon, Boeing, Astra, Hughes, Inmarsat, and Telesat all want to build and launch their own mega (>1000) or minisatellite constellations — if all goes according to plan we are looking at over 79,000 satellites for global broadband.
With so many satellites planned for launch, mitigating space debris is imperative to avoid such potential catastrophes as Kessler Syndrome — the theory that cascading collisions could render space travel impossible. OTVs will be critical infrastructure to de-orbit old satellites and large debris — i.e. slow them down enough that they fall and burn up in the atmosphere. This has become a critical issue for commercial companies and the US government–so much so that the DoD is now investing in debris mitigation technologies (read more about a new DoD contract Atomos is pursuing here). More and more, the US sees protecting the orbital environment and in-space mobility and logistics as a critical national security capability.
Orbital infrastructure, including OTVs, will be a giant market. The global space economy has grown to about $447 billion in 2020, a 4.4% increase from 2019 — some experts predict it could reach $1.5 trillion by the end of 2030 as launch costs continue to drop.
Private and government space organizations will have a massive impact on the development of the US OTV market for the coming years. For instance, NASA wants commercial companies to fly cargo to the future Lunar Gateway. This $7 billion program seeks repeated cargo delivery of 4,400 kg to the Gateway in lunar orbit, a vital component to the Artemis program — a perfect fit for Atomos’ Proton and Neutron OTVs.
Back to nuclear propulsion. Solar panels are expensive, fragile, and degrade over time. Their specific power (a key space metric that tells us the ratio of something’s weight to the amount of power it generates) is fine for short distances, but lunar and deep space missions will require more energy density. To that end, Congress has apportioned $100 million to develop space nuclear, and Atomos — now you see where their name comes from — is laying the groundwork to commercialize such technology. On the commercial side, Vanessa and William are working with companies that collectively own 200 satellites and plan to launch 1600 more in the next two years to see how nuclear-powered maneuverability solves some of their biggest challenges.
Preparing for Impact
All that near-term opportunity makes for the momentous outcome we look for at Cantos, but there’s a chance it saves us all one day too. If you’ve spent any time looking into existential risk (“X risk”), you know we aren’t adequately suited for an Earth-threatening asteroid impact. In October 2020, NASA simulated an impending impact from a fictitious asteroid named 2021PDC that could hit Earth. Even with six months’ warning, NASA accepted they couldn’t create a plan in time.
Luckily that was just a simulation, but there have been close occurrences in the past, like Apophis, a space rock the size of the Empire State Building sideways, was discovered in 2004. At the time, researchers believed it had a 2.7% chance of colliding with Earth in 2029. They were later able to rule out any possibility of the asteroid impacting Earth, but that’s still far too close for comfort.
Nuclear propulsion is the only way we could (1) have a ‘patrolling spacecraft’ that could provide an adequate heads up and (2) rapidly intercept and exert enough thrust on an asteroid to move it into a safe trajectory. Earth will be with this projection if the revolutionary technologies Atomos is pursuing aren’t realized.
Hence the “…and just might save it” on Cantos’ home page!
