Orbit Fab opens a port worth 30 thousand. dollars to refuel satellites

Orbit Fab wants to construct “gas stations” for satellites – which suggests it needs a fuel cap, a mechanism used to transfer fuel from an orbital tanker to a customer’s spacecraft. This docking mechanism, called RAFTI, is currently approved for flight and commercially available. Price for every port? Only $30,000.

The Colorado-based startup (former TechCrunch Disrupt (*30*) finalist) has been operating since 2018, and its CEO and co-founder Daniel Faber has been working within the space industry for several a long time; he might be best known for running Deep Space Industries (DSI), a company that focused on asteroid mining. Founded in 2012, the corporate was acquired by Bradford Space seven years later.

“If you want to (talk) about something, it’s too early,” he joked during a recent interview. As a part of the corporate’s efforts to eventually construct the technology to seek for a distant asteroid, DSI built satellite thrusters for orbital maneuvering. This work and subsequent conversations with customers and colleagues ultimately led Faber to consider that the following big opportunity was space refueling.

Part of that’s simple arithmetic: Co-workers and former clients told him they may squeeze as much as $1 million in marginal revenue from satellite missions with an additional pound of fuel.

“Spacecraft are optimized for how much fuel they have, and when they run out, that extra kilogram will give them a million dollars of marginal income,” Faber said. “We are creating so much value from this that we just have to do it.”

The 2010s also saw the emergence of several satellite servicing firms, comparable to Astroscale, that develop technologies for removing space debris, extending the lifetime of satellites, or delivering satellites on the last minute. Faber calls these capabilities “tow vehicle applications” and realized there would eventually be a need for orbital gas stations to complement this fleet.

This is how Orbit Fab was born. In the primary 12 months of the corporate’s operation raised a seed round worth $6 million with the support of Bolt and Munich Re Ventures, a VC company of Munich Re Group, considered one of the most important insurers of satellites and rockets. In 2023, the corporate raised a $28.5 million Series A round.

The startup’s technology is ambitious, however the architecture is kind of easy: the thought is to equip customer satellites with a refueling port (Faber called it a “fuel cap,” but officially it’s called RAFTI) while the hardware continues to be on Earth. RAFTI, which stands for “Rapid Attachment Fluid Transfer Interface,” will also be used to refuel the spacecraft on the bottom before launch. When a RAFTI-equipped satellite runs out of fuel, considered one of Orbit Fab’s tankers will have the ability to pick up some fuel from orbital depots and deliver it directly to the shopper’s satellite for refueling.

The only two things the corporate sells are fuel and refueling ports; as you would possibly expect, the true money will come from fuel sales. On its website, Orbit Fab says the service to deliver hydrazine to geostationary orbit will cost $20 million for a mass of up to 100 kilograms.

Given the simplicity of the architecture, nailing down each bit of hardware is crucial; subsequently, it took Orbit Fab years to debut on the refueling port. There are many variables to consider: cost to the shopper versus potential marginal revenue from a further life in orbit; the impact of refueling on the shopper’s spacecraft; and the challenge of developing a docking mechanism that may also transport fuel.

In addition to all of those challenges, the corporate had to be certain that its component complied with NASA, Space Force and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics standards to ensure it was secure, reliable and resistant to the tough environments of space.

“It wasn’t cheap,” Faber said. “It wasn’t quick, but in the end we have an elegant design that meets these requirements and has the simplicity that comes from good design.”

Faber said considered one of the most important changes from the corporate’s founding to now’s the creation of the U.S. Space Force and the big impact it has had on the space industry. Ultimately, Orbit Fab focused most of its attention on meeting the emerging needs of the Space Force, which was very fascinated with orbital mobility to avoid space debris or rendezvous with other satellites.

The company anticipates that the primary RAFTI will launch customer satellites into orbit later this 12 months. That shall be followed next 12 months by the launch of the primary fuel shuttle under a contract with the Department of Defense to deliver fuel to geostationary orbit in 2025. Orbit Fab intends to sell 100 refueling ports this 12 months, which is able to enable RAFTI to have “a decent percentage of the satellites that will go into orbit,” he said Faber. He added that Orbit Fab has a further contract with an unnamed business customer to supply “a significant amount of fuel” over several years.

Beyond these milestones, Faber hinted that the corporate already had plans to modernize RAFTI and design variants that might handle higher pressure propellants. The team can be serious about redesigning the gripper housing for larger spacecraft if the market indicates that is where they need to go next.

“SpaceX made rockets reusable, Orbit Fab makes satellites reusable,” Faber said. “If you run a rocket company in today’s world and you’re not working on reusable rockets, you’re working in a dead end. The same goes for satellites: if you don’t make your satellites reusable, you’ll just put pre-planned junk into orbit.”