New Space Startup Lux Aeterna wants to make the satellites reusable

Satellites can accomplish incredible tasks such as providing the Internet or helping monitor forest fires. But many of them finally meet an ardent death that burns in the earth’s atmosphere. Others use their last piece of fuel to move to so -called “cemeteries” orbits, where they surround the planet in a perpetual deep gel.

A new startup called Lux ​​Aeterna wants to change this. The company based in Denver, which comes out of Stealth today, has designed a reusable satellite called Delphi which it aims to launch – and to land – in 2027.

If successful, this could help reduce the cost to put useful satellite loads in space. This would also make the process much more flexible than today, because satellites are designed to stay in orbit for years and cannot mainly be modified for other uses.

These attributes have already bitten the interest of the Ministry of Defense, which has made low orbit important part of the military strategy of the United States.

The venture capital also took note and written checks. The startup field was attractive enough to generate $ 4 million in pre-series funding, led by Space Capital and including other funds at an early stage such as Dynamo Ventures and Mission One Capital.

The founder and CEO, Brian Taylor, said that the idea of ​​Lux Aeterna came to him last year when he looked at his former employer, SpaceX, launching one of his ship’s test vehicles in space.

“I want to fill Starship with something incredible and something that changes all the industry,” recalls Taylor during an interview with Techcrunch.

Starship is the largest rocket ever built. As part of this, it has the potential to send greater useful loads in space than what was previously possible. Size is important for people who build satellites and other spacecrafts, because they often work upside down from the simple constraint of what can adapt in the loading area of ​​a rocket. And Starship is not alone – there are also other heavy rockets in progress, such as the new Glenn of Blue Origin.

It is difficult to conceive of a satellite which can survive the brutal forces to enter the earthly atmosphere at high speed. But with the additional space offered by heavy rockets, Taylor said that it was possible to build one that can survive several discounts without having compromise on technology due to cost or weight compromise.

In the case of Lux Aeterna, it means using a thermal shield. In the rendering of the startup published on Wednesday, the conical thermal shield of the Delphi satellite recalls those which protected some of the most famous spacecrafts in NASA.

There is a reason for this, according to Taylor: these conceptions worked.

“We have definitively examined what NASA had done in the past on the exploratory missions (and) of the return missions samples, and that has really helped to justify the architecture with which we went,” he said. “I think it’s very important, when you do something ambitious like that, that you don’t reinvent the wheel on everything, right?”

Taylor refused to put himself in other details on the functioning of the Delphi satellite, or how Lux Aeterna will renovate the profession between launches. (The design seems to involve the capacity to fold the structure of the satellite bus so that it adapts safely behind the thermal shield.)

Admittedly, he has a lot of experience in the satellite world. In addition to working on Starlink at SpaceX, Taylor has also worked on the Kuiper satellite program of Amazon and the startup of space infrastructure Orbital loft.

The plan for Delphi is to embark on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2027, to make a complete orbital flight, then return to Earth. Then, Lux Aeterna wants to redo this to prove the reusction of Delphi.

From there, Taylor said that his team was working on a larger production vehicle that will demonstrate much greater reusability.

Despite decades of innovation in space flights, Taylor said he thought that industry was still very young, which leaves many opportunities for a company like Lux Aeterna to establish a long -term business.

“It is not at the level of the maturity of the fleas (computers). It is not at the level of the maturity of the automobile,” he said. Satellite’s reusability will help change this. And although Taylor was attached to this cause, he said he was delighted with everything he cannot imagine who will exist in a space economy.

“We don’t know that what we don’t know will come,” he said. “This is probably the most exciting part.”