In first grade, Patrick Miga saw a photo of Neptune (snapped by the Voyager 2 spacecraft). Ever since then, his life has been directed toward space.
Finding his way into the industry took a little longer than falling in love with it. While at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s aerospace-engineering department, Miga searched for an engineering role that gave him the feeling he had as a child. He found it in astrodynamics—the study of math and physics outside of Earth.
Traffic cop: While completing a masters in astrodynamics, Miga landed an internship at The Aerospace Corporation, and after graduation, at Advanced Space, where he helped to create his multidisciplinary role working across the company’s SSA, business-development, and project-management teams.
“If you really break it down, what I tell people my job is: I connect the dots,” Miga said.
The role allows him to work on projects surveilling Earth’s orbital trajectories, as well as driving the future of space traffic management (STM) around interplanetary bodies. At Advanced Space, Miga is building a system for SSA and STM around the Moon, for a future where cislunar space is much more crowded than it is today.
“I envision a future where travel to the Moon is no longer extraordinary, but routine. My work is focused on helping build the infrastructure that makes that future possible,” Miga told Payload.
Rowing in the right direction: Miga isn’t building this future single-handed.
He spends much of his time getting buy-in from space-industry stakeholders for planning for a lunar future.
For the past three years, Miga has convened an annual cislunar workshop for experts to plan future Moon-traffic management. He also works as a mentor for young space professionals looking to enter the industry, “helping develop the people who will soon build this infrastructure.”
“The assets up there, the people up there, everyone is going to be in the same environment,” he said. “If I’m trying to build a space traffic-management tool, you need to get everyone involved and on the same page.”
James Shin, K2 Space
“As I begin to understand how much [impact]…things like cellular telecommunications, imaging, climate [research]…have globally—once I started to understand that, I was like, ‘Okay, this is definitely the industry that I want to work in,’” Shin told Payload.
Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter
As an expert in 3D printing for terrestrial applications, Robert Ihnatisin was surprised by how slow the in-orbit manufacturing industry was progressing. So, naturally, he started a company to solve the problem himself.
Muhammad Hunain, Melagen Labs
“That’s where I realized we’re stuck at a 1980s standard: still shielding spacecraft with aluminum, and rad-hardened electronics [were] too expensive to build at the scale this economy demands,” Hunain told Payload.
Dhruv Jain, Kayhan Space
When Dhruv Jain transferred to a new school, he joined the astronomy club on a whim. Soon, he was chasing meteor showers and tracking the transit of Venus—and now, more than a decade later, he’s built a career helping space companies track objects in orbit.
Dallas-based Balerion Space Ventures has surpassed its $200M target for its second fund, the firm announced Thursday. Fund II—which remains open—is more than five times the size of the firm’s debut fund, which came in at just under $40M.
Balerion had closed ~$90M as of May, according to Venture Capital Journal. Cofounder and General Partner Daniel Kleinmann chalked up the momentum since then to portfolio companies hitting milestones and raising up-rounds—which he said resonated with LPs.
The firm is also holding back capital for follow-on rounds. “These are really capital-intensive businesses,” Kleinmann told Payload. “Having the ability to reserve capital to continue supporting these businesses as they hit major technical, commercial, government milestones is really important to us.”
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