The Latvian nuclear power startup is working on a solution for lunar missions hoping to survive the lunar night—a harsh, cold stretch of darkness lasting 14 Earth days that’s a death sentence for solar powered missions.
The contracts, announced on Tuesday, are intended to allow the intel agency to access multiple remote sensing phenomenologies from EO to RF and beyond.
Stoke Space had enough capital at the end of last year to fund the first few flights of its Nova rocket—and now, it has even more.
“We don’t have the budgetary ability to do everything and now—unlike 10 years ago—there is a business case to be made.”
They flew an actuator on SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission in November that—when tested in orbit—achieved a 0.003-degree rotation accuracy.
The mission will test technologies including multispectral satellite inspection, formation flying, and WiFi-based inter-satellite links.
UKSA awarded contracts to three companies worth a combined $1.1M+ to advance in-orbit manufacturing.
The update is an about-face from previous comments made by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who called the Moon a “distraction” in January 2025.
“Getting back to the Moon means getting back to the basics,” he wrote. “NASA must regain its core competencies in technical, engineering, and operational excellence.”
ReOrbit isn’t waiting around for the space industry to finish debating the viability of data centers in orbit.
“Expandable structures represent a step change in how surface infrastructure can be delivered and deployed,” Saleem Miyan, cofounder and CEO of Max Space, said in a statement. “Its architecture embodies increased capability, scalability, and versatility that are essential for sustained deep-space human activity, and to unleash the lunar and Martian economies.”
The company’s original vision was to deploy a 1,500 sat VLEO constellation to provide high-bandwidth connectivity for telecom providers. It’s now working to offer connections directly to consumer devices as well.
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