Satellite Mega-Constellations

Airbus

Public (EPA: AIR)

Airbus is Europe's largest aerospace company, spanning commercial aircraft, helicopters, defence and space. In civil aviation it remains Boeing's only true peer at global scale and is pairing near-term production growth with longer-term work on lower-carbon aircraft technologies, future single-aisle designs and hydrogen propulsion. H1 2026 results on 29 July showed revenue EUR 33.2B (+12% YoY) on 351 deliveries, including a record Q2 of 237, and reaffirmed around 870 deliveries, EUR 7.5B adjusted EBIT and EUR 4.5B free cash flow before customer financing. The official September 2026 orders-and-deliveries bulletin, posted 8 October, lists 72 commercial deliveries to 37 customers, 17 gross orders, and 547 deliveries year to date to 84 customers, leaving 323 aircraft for the fourth quarter versus the around-870 target. Aerospace Global News, from the same bulletin, split September as 59 A320 family (37 A321neo, 21 A320neo, one A319neo), eight A220s, two A330neos and three A350-900s, with 1,105 net orders after 69 cancellations and a 9,310 backlog. A350F prototype MSN700 first flew from Toulouse on 29 September (official 4 hours 10 minutes, 25,000 feet); the over-9-month / about 400-hour campaign is under way, with first delivery still targeted H2 2027. Amparo Moraleda assumed Board Chair on 1 October, succeeding Rene Obermann; the same meeting co-opted ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet and named Mark Dunkerley lead independent director. Spain workers approved the ministry-mediated labor proposal on 30 September-1 October (union figures 10,269 yes / 76.76%). On 2 October Airbus Defence and Space delivered the first 32 next-generation OneWeb satellites to Eutelsat from Toulouse, the first of 669 refresh spacecraft. Airbus called Avolon's 9 October 110-jet package (35 A330-900s and 75 A320neo Family) a firm order; Avolon's same-day note said it remains subject only to Bohai Leasing shareholder approval expected before the end of October. The 7 October Biman firm order for four A350-900s and six A321neos did not state delivery years. Airbus still has not named the A321neo stringer-coatings supplier on its own site; a 28 September Reuters reprint said Airbus declined to name suppliers while attributing work at TESI and a 500-aircraft alert including 250 still in production. 9m 2026 results are due 28 October.

1970 · 🇪🇺 Leiden, Netherlands / Toulouse, France

Blue Origin

Private

Blue Origin is a privately held aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos that develops reusable launch vehicles, rocket engines, lunar landers, in-space mobility systems, and satellite communications infrastructure. Its current programs span the New Shepard suborbital system, the New Glenn heavy-lift rocket, the BE-4 engine family that also powers ULA's Vulcan, the Blue Moon lunar lander family, the Blue Ring spacecraft platform, and the TeraWave network. The FAA closed its NG-3 mishap investigation and lifted the New Glenn grounding on May 22, 2026, but on May 28 a New Glenn exploded during a hotfire at LC-36. CEO Dave Limp still targets a flight before year-end via a hybrid crane-erect path; the June 30 return-to-flight page remains at Phase 3, and NG-4 has not flown. ETH Zurich said Oct. 2 that Thomas Zurbuchen will join in January 2027 as senior vice president of Advanced Concepts; Blue Origin has not posted a matching statement, and the reporting line is unpublished. On Oct. 8 the company announced Constellation Park in Hutto, Texas, a 1.3 million-square-foot campus for TeraWave, Quartz and other satellite hardware; construction start and occupancy dates were not published. New Shepard remains paused. The roughly $700 million Mars Telecommunications Network award remains stayed by Rocket Lab's September 11 GAO protest.

2000 · 🇺🇸 Kent, Washington

CAS Space

Private

CAS Space (Zhongke Aerospace) is a 2018 commercial spinoff majority-owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by founder and chairman Yang Yiqiang, former chief commander of the state Long March 11 solid rocket. Headquartered in Guangzhou, it now lists 900+ employees. After the successful 20 September 2026 Kinetica-1 Y18 flight from Dongfeng (nine satellites including Chaozhisuan-1), the company homepage reports 16 successful launches and 122 payloads in orbit (Kinetica-1: 16 flights, 15 successes, 119 satellites; the Kinetica series also includes the 30 March Kinetica-2 maiden flight). That September land flight filled the monthly Kinetica-1 slot missed in August, but the first sea launch (Y17, three satellites from waters near Guangdong) remained unflown as of 5 October 2026, with the Y18 mission article still calling it about to depart. The second Kinetica-2 vehicle (Y2) left Guangzhou for Jiuquan on 26 August 2026 for an 18-satellite Qianfan mission; company news through 28 September and the Kinetica-2 product page (still one success) have not reported a flight or a dated Jiuquan window, so the October 2026 target remains the last sourced schedule, distinct from LandSpace's 15 September 10-satellite Qianfan flight. The 4.18 billion yuan STAR Market application, refreshed 29 June 2026, was listed by SSE as suspended (financials update) on 30 September 2026 after FY2025 figures expired; that is a prospectus-refresh pause, not a rejection, and no CSRC registration, pricing, or trading date has been set. On 17 September the company said Lihong-2's first flight and 100 km-class recovery are planned for Q1 2027.

2018 · 🇨🇳 Guangzhou, Guangdong, China

CASC

State-Owned (SASAC)

China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is the state-owned prime contractor for China's space program and the world's most prolific launch organization by missions flown. Wholly owned by the central government through SASAC and led by chairman Chen Mingbo, it develops and operates the Long March (Changzheng) rocket family - which flew its 671st cumulative mission on October 10, 2026, a Long March 12 from the Hainan commercial space launch site delivering satellite-internet low-Earth-orbit group 27 - along with the Shenzhou crewed spacecraft, Tianzhou cargo vehicles, the Tiangong space station, BeiDou navigation and GuoWang broadband satellites, the Chang'e lunar and Tianwen planetary probes, and China's strategic missiles. After a national-record 73 launches in 2025, CASC is targeting over 100 launches in 2026 amid an industry-wide national push toward ~140, debuted the partially reusable Long March 12B in June 2026, and saw its Tianwen-2 probe reach the quasi-moon asteroid Kamo'oalewa on July 6, 2026. On July 10, 2026 it made China the second nation ever to recover an orbital rocket first stage, when the new single-stick, partially reusable Long March 10B flew its maiden mission from Hainan and captured its booster in a sea-based net, with a reflight of the recovered booster still targeted before the end of 2026. That momentum was interrupted on August 10, 2026, when a Long March 7A broke apart shortly after liftoff and lost its satellite payload - only the vehicle's second failure ever. CMSA said Chang'e-7 cannot fly within the 2026 window; partner reporting points to early 2027, with no official CMSA date. After a 16-day gap following the 665th mission on August 25, Long March flights resumed with the 666th on September 10 and continued through the 671st on October 10. Specialist reporting said CASC had begun a September quality-correcting campaign across its enterprises to address a severe quality challenge. On August 28, 2026 the Shenzhou-23 crew completed its first spacewalk, repairing a Tiangong solar wing and installing debris shields. The Long March 10A orbital debut and uncrewed Mengzhou 1 capsule test remain targeted around late 2026 but flagged as at risk of slipping into early 2027 - neither had flown as of October 10, 2026.

1999 · 🇨🇳 Beijing, China

Cosmoleap

Private

Cosmoleap (大航跃迁) is a Chinese launch startup founded in February 2024 by Chen Shuguang. The legal parent, Shanghai Dahang Yueqian Aerospace Technology, is registered in Shanghai's Lingang free-trade zone; the Beijing Dahang Yueqian subsidiary does rocket design, R&D, production, and operations. Its product is Yueqian-1 ('Leap-1'), and it remains the first Chinese company to pursue a SpaceX Starship-style 'chopstick' tower-catch recovery instead of landing legs. The roughly 70 m-tall, 4.2 m-diameter, methane-liquid oxygen two-stage rocket is designed to lift about 18,000 kg to LEO when expended or ~12,000 kg with the first stage recovered, on a cluster of nine ~80-ton-class engines reusable up to 20 times. It initially flies the YF-209 engine sourced from CASC's Academy of Aerospace Liquid Propulsion Technology while developing its own 100-ton-class Qingyu-11 methalox engine (targeting ~150 t thrust, deep throttling, and up to 50 reuses); Qingyu-11 cleared a round of core-component tests (torch ignition, low-temperature and liquid-flow testing) in June 2026 and is still moving toward full-system test firing, with no full-system firing reported as of early September 2026. Cosmoleap raised roughly 100 million yuan (~$14M) in November 2024 and a 500 million yuan (~$73M) Series A in April 2026 - about 600 million yuan (~$84M) total - and has disclosed no later round. On March 3, 2026 the company signed a strategic supply-chain cooperation agreement with Beijing Aerospace Guanghua Electronic Technology. The latest public hardware milestone remains the August 19, 2026 combined static-load test of the Yueqian-1 second-stage frame and propellant-tank rear-bottom structure; the company still plans final assembly and integrated testing in the second half of 2026 and a debut orbital flight in 2027, racing domestic tower-catch rival Astronstone.

2024 · 🇨🇳 Shanghai and Beijing, China

Galactic Energy

Private

Galactic Energy (Beijing Xinghe Power) is one of China's leading commercial launch companies and the most prolific private launch provider in the country. Its small solid-fuel Ceres-1 - flying from both land and a sea platform (Ceres-1S) - has reached orbit 23 times with 21 successes, deploying around 89 satellites since 2020, but it has not flown again since the January 15, 2026 Ceres-1S Y7 sea launch. The larger solid Ceres-2 failed on its January 2026 debut; Galactic Energy concluded in June 2026 that a design flaw in the first stage's nozzle throat liner caused the failure and has not announced a return-to-flight date. The partially reusable kerosene-liquid oxygen Pallas-1 flew its debut mission on September 1, 2026, reaching its planned sun-synchronous test orbit with a dummy payload and no first-stage recovery attempt, the first step in a three-step plan toward routine booster reuse. Galactic Energy closed a 2.4 billion yuan (~$336M) Series D in September 2025, bringing disclosed funding to roughly $410M, is raising a further round (at least 400 million yuan / ~$59M committed as of July 2026) to fund follow-on Pallas-1 flights, was shortlisted in June 2026 as a candidate launch provider for China's Qingzhou cargo spacecraft that will resupply the Tiangong space station, and remains among the commercial launch firms in Shanghai STAR Market IPO counseling.

2018 · 🇨🇳 Beijing, China

K2 Space

Private

K2 Space builds deliberately large satellites at a moment when the rest of the industry is shrinking them, on the argument that power, not mass, is what limits what a spacecraft can do. Its Mega Class bus carries up to 3,000 kg of payload and tens of kilowatts of power for a list price around $15 million, roughly ten times the power of a typical constellation satellite, and its 20 kW krypton Hall-effect thruster is the most powerful electric thruster flown in space. Founded in 2022 by brothers Karan and Neel Kunjur, both former SpaceX engineers, the company flew a subsystem demonstrator called Heritage in January 2025 and launched its first full Mega Class satellite, Gravitas, on March 30, 2026. Gravitas carried customer payloads and used its own thruster to raise itself from low Earth orbit to medium Earth orbit, a climb Breaking Defense reported as complete in a self-funded demonstration; K2's site still lists the spacecraft as operational on orbit. In 2026 it went from startup to supplier on three of the biggest programs in the sector: an initial SES meoSphere MEO order (SpaceNews: 28 satellites; K2's Series D release: a 30-satellite first tranche), Mega Class buses for the Anduril-led space-based interceptor team on Golden Dome, and its first Pentagon program of record as bus provider for the Space Force's Protected Tactical Satcom-Global. A $500 million Series D on July 30, 2026 at a $6.8 billion valuation, more than double the December 2025 mark, funds the move from one satellite at a time to a 180,000 square foot Torrance factory rated at up to 100 large satellites a year. Next up is Trinity, three satellites into three orbits, listed for Q2 2027.

2022 · 🇺🇸 Torrance, California

LandSpace

Private (Shanghai STAR Market IPO filed)

LandSpace (Beijing LandSpace Technology) is China's leading commercial rocket company and, through satellite affiliate Hongqing Technology, a would-be constellation operator. In July 2023 its methane-liquid oxygen Zhuque-2 became the first methalox rocket in the world to reach orbit, and the company now flies the upgraded Zhuque-2E for commercial constellation missions. On September 15, 2026 Zhuque-2E Y7 placed 10 Qianfan Polar Orbit Group 19 satellites into a roughly 900 km orbit - the ninth Zhuque-2-family flight and the first large-scale satellite-internet constellation deployment by a Chinese private rocket. Its flagship is the reusable, stainless-steel Zhuque-3, a Falcon 9-class vehicle whose December 2025 maiden flight reached orbit but failed to recover its booster; on its second orbital flight on August 18, 2026, Zhuque-3 delivered the demo Honghu-03 satellite to orbit and completed China's first-ever landing of a private orbital-class rocket booster, joining SpaceX and Blue Origin as the third company to land an orbital booster on legs, though residual propellant ignited shortly after touchdown and the resulting fire damaged the landing-gear area and collapsed the stainless-steel stage. LandSpace says it still aims to refurbish and reuse a recovered first stage within about six months, pointing to around February 2027, and after Y7 said it continues Zhuque-3 engineering reuse verification. Payload reported on September 4, 2026 that LandSpace is the farthest along of China's commercial rocket firms in the STAR Market queue after that landing. The company refiled an updated STAR Market prospectus on June 29, 2026, returning the Shanghai review to 'inquiry' status, and for the first time projected reaching profitability by 2029 (premised on Zhuque-3 mass production and routine reuse). That refiling disclosed LandSpace's first full-year 2025 results - revenue of 52.10 million yuan (~$7.2M, up about 11x year over year) against a widening net loss of 1.71 billion yuan (~$240M, up about 95% YoY) - and the company still seeks to raise about 7.5 billion yuan (~$1.1B). Its STAR Market share-issuance terms imply a post-listing valuation near 75 billion yuan (~$10.4B). Satellite affiliate Hongqing Technology, LandSpace's largest-shareholder constellation play, closed a Pre-B round of more than 1.3 billion yuan (~$191M) on July 2, 2026 and has filed the 10,000-satellite Honghu-3 constellation with the ITU.

2015 · 🇨🇳 Beijing, China

Orienspace

Private

Orienspace (Oriental Space / Dongfang Space), founded in 2020 in Yantai, builds the Gravity (Yinli) family of launch vehicles. Its solid-propellant Gravity-1 is the world's largest solid-fuel carrier rocket - sea-launched and capable of 6,500 kg to LEO - and is now four-for-four after Gravity-1 Y3 lifted off at 06:00 Beijing time on September 16, 2026 (22:00 UTC on September 15) from waters off Shanghai and placed eight Qianfan networking satellites plus an EUHT technology-test satellite into an about 800 km orbit. Xinhua said the mission set Chinese sea-launch records for payload mass (more than three tonnes) and insertion altitude, and was Gravity-1's first giant-LEO constellation networking flight. Gravity-2, a reusable kerolox heavy-lift with nine Yuanli-110 engines, remains aimed at a Q4 2026 debut; Orienspace's own about page says large-scale ground tests are underway and the vehicle is expected to be ready for first flight in Q4 2026. The company's own product page now specifies Gravity-3 as an 81-meter, 100-tonne-to-LEO super-heavy with full-vehicle recovery. Orienspace was one of four commercial firms shortlisted in June 2026 to launch CAS's Qingzhou space-station cargo craft (first docking targeted January 2027). It closed a pre-C round of several hundred million yuan on August 5, 2026 and has begun IPO coaching toward a Shanghai STAR Market listing.

2020 · 🇨🇳 Yantai, Shandong, China

Reflect Orbital

Private

Reflect Orbital, founded in October 2021 by former SpaceX engineer Ben Nowack and former Zipline mechanical engineer Tristan Semmelhack, is building satellites that unfurl thin-film mirrors in low Earth orbit and steer reflected sunlight onto specific spots on the ground after dark. The pitch is 'sunlight on demand': a customer picks a location and a time window, and a passing reflector lights it up, initially at roughly the brightness of a full moon over a spot a few kilometers wide, with the long-term business aimed at extending the generating day of utility-scale solar farms by beaming sunlight to them just before dawn and just after dusk. The company has raised about $35 million, including a $6.5 million seed led by Sequoia Capital in September 2024 and a $20 million Series A led by Lux Capital in May 2025, and won a $1.25 million AFWERX SBIR Phase II contract in June 2025. Its first demonstration satellite, Earendil-1, carries a roughly 18-meter-square aluminized reflector on a 142 kg spacecraft bound for a 600 to 650 km orbit, and on July 9, 2026 the FCC licensed its construction and operation, clearing the way for a launch later in 2026 on a SpaceX rideshare. The application drew close to 1,900 mostly critical comments and hard opposition from astronomers: the European Southern Observatory calculated that a full constellation would raise background sky brightness by a factor of three to four, and the FCC granted the license while stating that optical-astronomy effects fall outside its authority. On August 6, 2026, DarkSky International, the American Bird Conservancy, Environment America and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, represented by Earthjustice, filed a formal Application for Review asking the full FCC to reverse the grant. As of September 16, 2026 the full Commission has not ruled, Earendil-1 still has no public launch-manifest assignment, and the second demonstration satellite still lacks its own FCC license. Reflect has answered with a dark-skies pledge to publish satellite positions in advance and to geofence reflections away from observatories, and its published roadmap runs from two demo satellites in 2026 to 36 in 2027, more than 1,000 by 2028, and 50,000 by 2035.

2021 · 🇺🇸 Hawthorne, California

Rocket Lab

Public (NASDAQ: RKLB)

Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company spanning launch, hypersonic test launch, spacecraft, payloads, satellite components, laser optical communications, and space robotics, with total headcount reaching 3,217 by the end of Q2 2026 after the Mynaric and Motiv acquisitions. Electron remains the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket. Rocket Lab reached 97 Electron missions with the 26 September 2026 Owlright Owlright Owlright dedicated Synspective StriX-13 launch from Launch Complex 1 in Mahia (12:39 p.m. NZST into a 559 km orbit), its 18th launch of 2026, after the 19 September Owl By The Dozen StriX-12 flight and the 11 September Happily Ever Faster confidential Earth-observation flight, putting it on track for a record year and its 100th launch. Rocket Lab is developing the medium-lift Neutron rocket for constellation, national-security, and exploration missions; the live Q4 2026 milestone is still delivery of Neutron to the Wallops pad, though CEO Peter Beck told analysts on the August 10 earnings call that the end-of-year launch window is narrowing and a slip into 2027 is a real possibility. The company posted record Q1 2026 revenue of $200.3M and record Q2 2026 revenue of $234M (+62% YoY), guiding to $250M-$265M in Q3 2026 revenue, and completed the $155.3M Mynaric and the Motiv Space Systems acquisitions in April and May 2026. On May 27, 2026 Rocket Lab cleared the System Requirements Review for the Space Development Agency's $816M Tracking Layer Tranche 3 missile-defense constellation, taking total SDA awards above $1.3B, and on June 22, 2026 the company joined the Nasdaq-100 Index. On June 29, 2026 Rocket Lab announced an agreement to acquire Iridium Communications for about $8B in cash and stock ($54.00/share, roughly half cash and half Rocket Lab stock). The deal has since cleared U.S. antitrust review, Rocket Lab completed its $1.944B at-the-market equity sale of 29.3 million shares on September 15, 2026 and terminated the $3.6B senior secured bridge after Iridium amended its $1.775B term loan to permit the change of control. On 24 September 2026 Iridium stockholders adopted the merger (Proposal 1: 85,862,105 for, 318,415 against, 67,862 abstained; about 99.6% of votes cast and about 81.0% of outstanding shares). Close remains expected in mid-2027 / Q2 2027 and is no longer subject to Iridium shareholder approval; remaining gates are regulatory, including FCC license-transfer consent (comments due 15 October, oppositions 30 October, replies 9 November). On July 27, 2026 Rocket Lab won a $266M U.S. Space Force RSLP contract for 12 (plus an option for six more) HASTE launches through 2028. On August 4, 2026 the U.S. Space Force awarded a $397M SB-AMTI contract to build, launch on the still-unflown Neutron, and operate Flatellite tracking satellites. Rocket Lab added a second GEO satellite production award (Viasat PTS-G, August 17), was onboarded to the Space Force's $981M-ceiling NITE-STAR IDIQ, and was selected for the Space Data Network Consortium with $12M in initial delivery orders. On August 10, 2026 it reported record Q2 backlog of $2.36B and unveiled GHOST. On September 8 it put germanium-free IMM Apex space solar cells into production. On September 11 it filed a GAO protest of NASA's roughly $700M Mars Telecommunications Network award to Blue Origin. RKLB closed 29 September 2026 at $69.70, a market cap of about $44.57B.

2006 · 🇺🇸 Long Beach, California

Space Epoch

Private

Space Epoch (箭元科技), legally Beijing Jianyuan Technology and branded 'Sepoch', is a Chinese commercial launch startup founded by Wei Yi (a former CALT and i-Space/Interstellar Glory engineer) to develop the Yuanxingzhe-1 ('Hiker-1') - a stainless-steel, methane-liquid oxygen, partially reusable medium-lift rocket whose sea-recovery, low-cost design draws frequent comparisons to a smaller SpaceX Starship. On May 29, 2025 it pulled off China's first sea-based vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing recovery test: a single-engine demonstrator flew a ~125-second suborbital hop to roughly 2.5 km and executed a controlled splashdown off Haiyang, Shandong, with the stainless stage recovered largely intact. Rather than build its own engines, Space Epoch buys methalox powerplants from engine maker Jiuzhou Yunjian (its LY-70 'Longyun' engine). In January 2026 it broke ground on a 5.2 billion yuan (~$740M) sea-recovery rocket plant in Hangzhou sized for up to 25 vehicles a year, aiming to cut launch costs toward 20,000 yuan/kg, and signed a payload cooperation with Hangzhou satellite maker Star Vision (Diwei-2). The plant's first vehicle, named 'Qiantang-hao,' was planned to start final assembly by the end of August 2026; as of early September 2026 no public confirmation of that assembly start has appeared. The latest disclosed hardware work is a July 22, 2026 second-stage tail-cabin vibration test, with first-flight systems still in joint testing and a debut orbital launch plus first-stage sea recovery still targeted by year-end. The company has expanded its footprint with a new Wenchang, Hainan launch-and-recovery site (acquired July 2026) and a Shandong manufacturing/R&D subsidiary in Haiyang (May 2026). It has also signed a Taobao/Alibaba partnership exploring rocket-based parcel delivery and a strategic cooperation with Shifang Xinglian (Suzhou) Aerospace Technology toward a new MEO satellite constellation.

2019 · 🇨🇳 Beijing, China

Space Pioneer

Private

Space Pioneer (Beijing Tianbing Technology), founded in 2019 by former LandSpace CTO Kang Yonglai, develops kerosene-liquid oxygen rockets and engines from a Fengtai, Beijing campus. Its Tianlong-2 became the first privately developed Chinese liquid-propellant rocket to reach orbit (April 2023). The flagship reusable Tianlong-3 failed on its April 3, 2026 maiden flight from Jiuquan's Dongfeng commercial zone about 33 seconds after liftoff, losing the Hangsheng-8 / TW-4 Xiyou satellite. As of early September 2026 the company has published no closed 'zeroing' investigation and no return-to-flight date; a second vehicle is still only reported as being prepared for a possible attempt before year-end. Official product specs now list Tianlong-3 at 72 m tall, 3.8 m diameter, 600 t liftoff mass, 855 t thrust, 17-22 t to LEO and 10-17 t to 500 km SSO, with nine TH-12 first-stage engines, a TH-12V second stage, a TH-32 upper stage, and at least 20 planned first-stage reuses. The site also advertises a heavier TL-3H strap-on variant (68 t to LEO) and a TL-3M crewed concept that has not flown. Space Pioneer has raised roughly $764M. A December 2025 Shanghai Stock Exchange rule now requires a successful orbital insertion on a medium-to-large reusable vehicle before a commercial-rocket STAR Market listing; Payload reported in early September 2026 that Space Pioneer filed for IPO counselling in 2025 and remains there after the April failure, while LandSpace, CAS Space, and Galactic Energy have moved further on the pad.

2019 · 🇨🇳 Beijing, China

Starcloud

Private

Starcloud is building data centers in orbit, and it is the only company that has actually run a data-center-class GPU in space rather than rendering one. Starcloud-1, a 60 kg satellite carrying an Nvidia H100, launched November 2, 2025 on SpaceX's Bandwagon-4 rideshare and by December had run Google's Gemma model and trained a small language model in orbit, both firsts. Founded in January 2024 as Lumen Orbit by Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, and Adi Oltean, renamed in March 2025 and now based in Redmond, Washington, it closed a $170 million Series A on March 30, 2026 at $1.1 billion and a $250 million Series A extension on August 21, 2026 at $2.3 billion, taking total raised to about $450 million. The pitch is that solar power above the atmosphere and radiative cooling in vacuum beat grid power and water cooling on the ground once launch is cheap enough, and the company has filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to 88,000 orbital data-center satellites. Starcloud-2, once targeted for October 2026, is now two 8 kW rideshare satellites in 2027 for customers including US government agencies, while Starcloud-3 remains gated on commercial Starship around 2028 to 2029. On September 30, 2026 Firefly said Starcloud's SC-1L compute payload will fly on Elytra on Firefly's third lunar mission, targeted no earlier than 2028; Starcloud.com has not posted its own release.

2024 · 🇺🇸 Redmond, Washington

United Launch Alliance

Active (50/50 joint venture: Boeing & Lockheed Martin)

United Launch Alliance is Boeing and Lockheed Martin's launch-services joint venture. Remaining Atlas V vehicles are reserved for Boeing Starliner: NASA and Boeing now plan an uncrewed Starliner-1 flight in December 2026 or January 2027 and a crewed Starliner-2 in 2028, with Starliner-1 through 4 on Atlas V and later missions planned for Vulcan once it is human-rated. Vulcan itself remains grounded after the February 12, 2026 USSF-87 GEM 63XL nozzle anomaly; ULA has not posted a return-to-flight date and independent trackers still list Amazon LV-01 as TBD. The company says it has more than 150 consecutive launches since 2006 and about 2,700 employees, with headquarters in Denver.

2006 · 🇺🇸 Denver, Colorado