Satellites can accomplish incredible tasks that can help provide the internet and monitor wildfires. However, many of them eventually encounter a fiery death that burns in the Earth’s atmosphere. Others use the last fuel to move into orbit of the “cemetery”, where they circle the planet with constant deep freeze.
A new startup called Lux Aeterna wants to change this. The Denver-based company coming out of stealth today has designed a reusable satellite called Delphi that is set to launch and aim for land in 2027.
If successful, it will help reduce the cost of putting satellite payloads into space. Additionally, satellites are designed to stay in orbit for years and are essentially unchanged for other applications, making the process much more flexible than it is today.
These attributes already attracted the interests of the Department of Defense, which has made low-earth orbit a critical part of the US military strategy.
The venture capitalist also informed – and written checks. The startup pitch was attractive enough to generate $4 million pre-seeded funds led by Space Capital, including other early stage funds such as Dynamo Venture and Mission One Capital.
Founder and CEO Brian Taylor said last year that Lux Aeterna’s idea came to him while watching his former employer, SpaceX, launch one of his Starship test vehicles into space.
“I want to fill spaceships with amazing things and things that change the entire industry,” Taylor recalled in an interview with TechCrunch.
The spacecraft is the largest rocket ever built. As part of this, it could potentially send a larger payload into space than before. Size is important for those who build satellites and other spacecraft. Because they often work backwards due to simple constraints that fit within the cargo area of the rocket. And the spacecraft is not alone. Like the new Glenn from Blue Origin, the work also has other heavy lift-rockets.
It is difficult to design a satellite that can survive the brutal force of re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds. However, the extra space provided by the heavy lifting rockets makes it possible for Taylor to build something that can survive multiple reentries without compromising on technology due to cost and weight trade-offs.
For the Lux Aeterna, that means using a heat shield. In the startup rendering released Wednesday, the Delphi satellite’s cone-shaped heat shield is reminiscent of a protective protection of some of NASA’s most famous spacecraft.
According to Taylor, there’s a reason. These designs worked.
“We definitely saw what NASA did in the past on its exploration missions. [and] The sample mission, and it really helped me justify the architecture we went with,” he said.
Taylor declined to further explain how the Delphi satellite works, or how Lux Aeterna will renovate the craft during the launch. (This design appears to include the ability to fold satellite bus structures.
Certainly, he has a lot of experience in the world of satellites. In addition to working with Starlink on Starlink, Taylor also worked on Amazon’s Kuiper Satellite Program and Space Infrastructure Startup Loft Orbital.
Delphi’s plan is to launch in 2027 with the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, running a full orbital flight before returning to Earth. After that, Lux Aeterna wants to do it again to prove Delphi’s reusability.
From there, Taylor said his team is working on a larger production vehicle that shows much greater reusability.
Despite decades of spaceflight innovation, Taylor said he still considers the industry to be very young.
“It’s not at the maturity level [computer] Tip. The reusability of satellites helps to change that. And while Taylor was committed to that cause, he said he was excited about everything he could never imagine to exist in a space-based economy.
“We don’t know what’s coming,” he said. “That’s probably the most exciting part.”
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