Vienna-based startup Tumbleweed is attempting to build an anti-gravity machine—one that looks strangely like a reentry vehicle.
Today, the company announced the closing of a €6.9M ($7.7M) seed round to fund the development of an in-orbit research vehicle—called Oasis Beta—that will be capable of reentering the Earth’s atmosphere, with missions set to begin in 2028. The round will also fund at least three missions in 2027 of Tumbleweed’s Pod payload.
Pact VC led the round, with additional participation from Vanagon Ventures, Prototype Capital, EWOR, and a group of angel investors, including SES cofounder Candace Johnson.
Return journey: The round comes hot off the heels of Tumbleweed’s first in-space mission. The company sent its first sat—Oasis Alpha—to orbit on SpaceX’s Transporter-17 rideshare in July. On that mission, the sat demonstrated its ability to host microgravity research payloads from four different customers.
Since then, Tumbleweed has seen an influx of demand from customers looking to access microgravity without building a satellite of their own. Tumbleweed specializes in giving space newbies their first ride to orbit.. Company officials said Tumbleweed’s decision to build its own reentry vehicle was driven not by a bid to create a best-in-class capability, but by an urge to smooth the path to space (and back) as much as possible for future customers.
“It is very consistent with our ethos of space being as much in the background as possible,” CEO Julian Rothenbuchner told Payload. “No one gives a shit about space for us, [so] we’re optimizing for maximum credibility outside of the space industry.”
Rothenbuchner said Tumbleweed is evaluating partnerships with other reentry vehicle providers, but building Oasis Beta in tandem to own more of the value chain.
Tumble up: Tumbleweed isn’t waiting to finish Beta before it flies again. The company has three flights booked in 2027, including both suborbital and orbital missions.
On at least one of the upcoming missions, Tumbleweed will attempt to demonstrate its ability to integrate payloads late in the launch process. By bringing this late-addition capability to the market, Tumbleweed hopes it can open the door for new types of in-orbit research missions that depend on live samples, or payloads that can’t sit on the shelf for weeks ahead of a launch.
“It’s a technical feat for sure. It’s also very much a procedural feat,” Rothenbuchner said. “What we are basically pushing super-hard for in this market is to be the most actionable ones. To be the ones where—with minimal effort [and] minimal cost—you can launch something tomorrow.”
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