San Francisco-based Samara Aerospace has closed a $10M seed round to help bring more stability to sats in orbit.
Balerion Space Ventures led the round, with funding announced in December. The seed also included participation from Illinois Ventures, MFV Partners, and Access Venture Partners.
Meet the tech: Satellites today generally use reaction wheels to position themselves in orbit. However, that legacy tech causes satellites to vibrate and jitter, risking blurry images and degrading accuracy.
Samara, however, has a different take—its Hummingbird satellite will use solar panel hinges to move panels up, down, left, and right in a way that can maneuver the sat. Cofounder and CEO Patrick Haddox says his tech can make platforms 1,000x more stable than traditional systems—and cut satellite size and weight without dinging performance.
Look up: The satellite bus builder is expecting to validate its tech in orbit imminently. The Impulse Space Mira spacecraft that launched in November aboard SpaceX Transporter-15 includes one panel and two hinges designed by Samara. The tech is currently waiting its turn, among Impulse’s other customers, to run its experiment and officially be flight proven.
“We know it’s alive, and we know it turned on,” Haddox told Payload.
Buy in: Haddox said the tech will likely benefit space companies in two sectors:
- EO, since a more stable sat means clearer photos.
- Optical comms, because a stable platform means a more reliable connection.
However, others are interested in how the hinges can make spacecraft design easier on Earth.
“There’s an aerospace prime interested…based on stackability. We can go flatter than other sats because we don’t have wheels on board, so they would have the ability to get many sats into orbit as quickly as possible,” Haddox said.
What’s next: Samara will use the funding to try to hit a big goal—launching its first Hummingbird sat in summer 2027.
Spin cycle: Though the company is announcing seed funding, Samara is named after a different kind of seed. Maple seed pods—the ones that helicopter down from trees—are called samaras. On how Samara picked the name, Haddox said: “We also have wings that help us spin.”
