DCVC anchors $150 million in financing for Impulse Space to deliver precise, fast, and affordable maneu­ver­ability of satellites within and between orbits

On Earth, our trans­porta­tion options are constrained by speed, reliability, and cost-effec­tive­ness, first and foremost. Generally, you can pick one of three, sometimes some combination of the first two or last two. Greyhound and Spirit Airlines are low-cost, but with reliability and timeliness challenges. The Concorde offered great speed, but at great cost and not so much reliability in the tragic end.

A similar calculus is at play in space transport. Getting satellites and other payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is faster and cheaper than it’s ever been. But to have the most impact, satellites need to be precisely delivered to specific and unique places on orbit. For some, LEO isn’t their final destination: they need to get from there to middle earth orbit (MEO), geosta­tionary orbit (GEO), or beyond. The possible desti­na­tions — and the appli­ca­tions and capa­bil­i­ties those particular orbits might unlock (like GPS in GEO) — are immense.

Stepping up to meet the strong and growing demand from commercial and government clients for trans­porting and maneuvering satellites in and between orbits is Impulse Space, a Redondo Beach, CA – based company that today is announcing $150 million in Series B funding. We are thrilled to join this round as the largest outside investor.

The investment will help Impulse deliver the next generation of Mira, an Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV) designed in-house from the ground up in less than 15 months, and which has already proven its cutting-edge capa­bil­i­ties. In its inaugural mission completed earlier this year, it success­fully delivered its customer’s payload while also performing a series of unprece­dented maneuvers using its nontoxic, high-powered chemical propulsion system. The funding will also support Impulse’s first launch of its Helios spacecraft, currently scheduled for 2026, and which will be able to take payloads of 5 tons or more from LEO to GEO in a single day.

At the heart of Impulse’s market advantage is its founder and CEO, Tom Mueller, a living legend of modern aerospace. As employee #1, head of propulsion, and one of the most important engineering leaders at SpaceX for more than 18 years, Mueller led the development of rocket engines of world-beating reliability and performance, upending the orbital launch industry in the process. He’s now busy ramping up a similar cadence of vehicle design, manu­fac­turing, testing, and assembly at Impulse’s 60,000-square-foot headquarters.

Impulse is an important addition to our growing portfolio of companies doing trans­for­ma­tive work in space. What unites them — from Rocket Lab, with its end-to-end launch services and vertically integrated space systems, to Capella, with its very-high resolution, all-weather, 24 – 7 SAR imagery of Earth’s surface, to Planet’s daily optical still, video, and hyper­spec­tral imagery of the entire Earth’s landmass — is deep technical expertise combined with an expansive vision of what humanity’s future in space should be. Congrats to Impulse — we look forward to the journey ahead.