True Anomaly, a startup developing vehicles and software for the Space Force to perform dynamic space operations, has hired Sarah Walter as chief operating officer.
Walter, who was most recently VP of engineering at York Space Systems, took charge of True Anomaly’s engineering, production, and mission operations last week.
The machine that builds the machine: At York, Walter led the company’s development of the Tranche 1 satellites built for the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, after serving in several engineering and management roles at Rolls-Royce.
Transitioning to a fast-scaling startup proved rewarding. Now she wants to bring her rapid design and production chops to True Anomaly, which raised a $260M Series C round earlier this year. The company is now building two Jackal spacecraft in tandem: One for the Space Force-backed Victus Haze mission as well as an internal demo.
“Jackal is a very highly agile, capable autonomous vehicle that is really hard to get right,” Walter said. “You’re not just in orbit, point and station it.”
Fail fast: True Anomaly’s first foray into space saw it lose contact with its first Jackal spacecraft on Mission X-1. It did make contact during Mission X-2, but didn’t share any updates about the test campaign.
“I knew coming into True Anomaly [about the] MX-1, MX-2 saga, and I am a big proponent of go fast, fail, learn and repeat, and continue to get better,” Walter told Payload. “A draw for me was the way that True navigated through getting their first vehicles up.”
How to do it: Walter says the key to an agile engineering culture that delivers is empowering engineers to make decisions.
“Your test will fail, you’ll have a supplier that can’t deliver, or you’ll have a design that isn’t meeting requirements—that’s not necessarily the thing that’s going to stop you from going fast,” Walter said.
“It’s the turn around how you make a decision. You have to empower those people to drive those solutions through rapidly, and create a supporting environment where if they don’t make the perfect decision, they’re not all of a sudden going to get chastised for it.”
Maneuver without regret: The systems True Anomaly is developing for the Space Force aren’t easy, requiring powerful thrusters, complex software, and avionics.
“[My] sole focus is MX-3 [and] Victus Haze—we need to get a bird up that is successful,” Walter said. “From what I’ve seen so far this week, I have very high confidence that we get there.”
