Impulse Space

On June 3, 2026 Impulse closes a $500 million Series D co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC with participation from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Linse Capital, bringing total capital raised to more than $1 billion. The company says it more than doubled headcount over the prior year and is expanding facilities in Redondo Beach, Boulder, Mojave, and Washington DC.

On July 8, 2026 Space Systems Command awards Impulse a National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1 IDIQ contract with an initial $5 million firm-fixed-price task order, making Impulse the first upper-stage provider to serve as a prime contractor in a program that had only ever contracted rocket companies. Pairing Helios with a medium-lift launcher is positioned as a cheaper route to high-energy orbits than a heavy-lift rocket.

On July 28, 2026 Impulse introduces Electra, its first in-house electric propulsion system, developed from concept to working system in under six months. Electra handles long-duration stationkeeping so Mira's chemical propellant stays available for rapid maneuvers, and is qualifying flight engines for integration with Mira.

On July 28, 2026 the U.S. Space Force modifies Impulse's Small Business Innovation Research Phase III contract, adding $27.77 million for two more Mira spacecraft carrying government payloads for space domain awareness in low Earth orbit. The modification brings the cumulative value of the VICTUS SURGO/SALO-era contract to $62.8 million, with work at Redondo Beach running through March 2030.

On August 12, 2026 Space Systems Command's Space Safari Office selects Impulse for a further $28 million extension of its SBIR Phase III contract, covering two more Tactically Responsive Space missions, VICTUS SALO 2 and VICTUS SALO 3. Impulse will deliver two additional Mira spacecraft to host government payloads in low Earth orbit, following the $27.77M expansion announced two weeks earlier.

At the Small Satellite Conference on August 25, 2026, Impulse discloses that its Caravan GEO rideshare program is now booked three missions deep through 2028: Caravan 1 (first half of 2027, manifest closed), Caravan 2 (Q1 2028, waitlisted), and a Caravan 3 mission (Q4 2028), with Caravan 4 and 5 eyed for 2029. The debut Caravan 1 mission, earlier framed around a 2026 target, is now precisely dated to the first half of 2027, and Impulse says it is moving from one Caravan mission a year toward roughly two per year given demand from space domain awareness, life-extension, and communications customers.

On September 8, 2026 Impulse published the results of a summer flyby campaign: after a February plane-change burn and spring alignment burns, the LEO Express 2 Mira executed a series of July close approaches to LEO Express 3, starting at about 820 meters and finishing at less than 200 meters. Starfish Space and HEO captured imagery of both vehicles. Impulse called it Mira's second close-proximity series after the December 2025 Remora rendezvous, and said the in-house GNC, propulsion, and mission-operations stack is now proven for space-domain-awareness and tactical re-tasking work.

Impulse posted a LEO Express 4 mission page for the fourth Mira flight: an Impulse-only checkout with no customer payloads, manifested via Exolaunch on SpaceX's Bandwagon-5 mid-inclination rideshare from Cape Canaveral. The flight is meant to wring out the upgraded Mira's higher delta-v, rapid thruster firings, and new avionics ahead of customer GEO work. Independent launch trackers list Bandwagon-5 no earlier than October 2026. Mira's product page still lists three missions flown, so the fourth vehicle has not yet launched.

LEO Express 2 launches on SpaceX's Transporter-12 rideshare in January 2025, and LEO Express 3 follows in November 2025, taking Impulse to three flown missions and giving the company two Mira spacecraft simultaneously on orbit.

In December 2025 Impulse and Starfish Space announce the completion of the Remora mission: Starfish payloads aboard the LEO Express 2 Mira guided it through a fully autonomous rendezvous and proximity operation with the LEO Express 1 Mira already in orbit, using a single lightweight camera and closed-loop guidance software. The mission went from concept to launch readiness in nine months.

The U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command awards Impulse a $34.5 million SBIR Phase III contract covering two Tactically Responsive Space missions: VICTUS SURGO, in which Helios carries a Mira to geosynchronous orbit, and VICTUS SALO, a low Earth orbit mission carrying an MIT-built payload.

Impulse's first Mira orbital transfer vehicle launches in November 2023 and demonstrates aggressive maneuvering on orbit, including a 150 km orbit raise executed in 75 seconds, plus collision avoidance and payload deployment.

Tom Mueller, SpaceX's first employee on propulsion and the designer of the Merlin engine family, leaves to found Impulse Space in Redondo Beach with the thesis that the bottleneck in space is no longer reaching orbit but moving around once you are there.