August's Space Dirt 🚀

Typically, August is the slowest business month of the year. Not in hard tech!

Proud to bring you another packed Space Dirt.

Let’s get to it.

-Erik Stiebel

REAL ESTATE HIGHLIGHTS

Ares Industries leased 3,200 square feet at 607 E El Segundo Blvd, El Segundo, CA. (source: Me!) 

Happy for my friends at Morpheus Space, who I helped relocate within the Gundo to lease 4,813 square feet at 2101 E El Segundo Blvd, El Segundo, CA. In July’s Space Dirt, I featured the news of Morpheus opening the first mass production facility for space systems in Dresden, Germany. Big things are ahead for the Morpheus team. (source: Me!) 

Ampaire moves from Hawthorne to lease 18,927 square feet at 4301 Donald Douglas Dr, Long Beach, CA. (source: Me!) 

Anduril is investing hundreds of millions in the development of Arsenal-1, a five million square foot plus production space that will employ thousands of people and is designed to produce tens of thousands of autonomous military systems annually. (source: Anduril.com)

Allen Control Systems subleased Saronic’s space in Austin, TX. (source: Me!) 

Aalo leased and moved into its new Austin, TX headquarters, a 40,000 square foot facility, where they plan to build its pilot reactor factory line with the goal of producing dozens of reactors per year. (source: LinkedIn)

Terradepth moved its Austin, TX headquarters closer to Lake Travis for ease of R&D testing. Its new address is 2000 Windy Terrace, Cedar Park, TX. Terradepth also opened a facility at 1816 Allison Ave, Panama City Beach, FL, which will place Terradepth personnel and assets in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean areas on a daily basis. (source: LinkedIn)

Epirus expands Oklahoma footprint with the opening of a new 3,000-square-foot office within Lawton Fort Sill’s Fires Innovation Science and Technology Accelerator (FISTA) Innovation Park, a leading center for technological advancement and home to the Joint C-sUAS University based in Lawton, Oklahoma. In July 2024, Epirus also commemorated the opening of a research location on the University of Oklahoma campus. (source: Epirus)

Amazon is investing $19.5 million to expand its satellite processing facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, to mitigate delays in deploying its 3,200-strong Project Kuiper broadband constellation. The company said the investment will support a secondary, 3,900-square-meter support facility at the site, which would help accelerate launch cadence amid a looming regulatory deadline to deploy half the constellation by July 2026. The building would join a 9,300-square-meter satellite processing facility Amazon announced last year at Kennedy’s runway-equipped Launch and Landing Facility, bringing total investment in the site to nearly $140 million. Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority, has agreed to reimburse Amazon for up to $3.2 million in construction costs. (SpaceNews)

NOTABLE FUNDINGS

Anduril announced it has secured $1.5 billion of funding for its Series F round to hyperscale defense manufacturing. This funding will enable Anduril to increase hiring, enhance processes, upgrade tooling, increase resiliency in its supply chain, and expand infrastructure. Anduril is also investing in Arsenal, the manufacturing platform for modern warfare. With Arsenal, Anduril’s goal is to manufacture and produce tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems addressing the urgent needs of the United States and our allies. Co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital, Anduril’s Series F values the company at $14 billion and includes new investors Fidelity Management & Research Company, Counterpoint Global, and Baillie Gifford, as well as major commitments from existing investors, including Altimeter and Franklin Venture Partners. (source: Anduril.com)

Hawthorne-based Starpath Robotics accelerates moon water mining plans with a $12 million seed round, co-led by 8VC and Fusion Fund, with participation from Day One Ventures, Balerion Space, and Indicator Ventures. (source: TechCrunch)

Seal Beach-based AstroForge, a startup planning to harvest platinum-group metals from asteroids, raised a $40 million Series A in the midst of preparing its second spacecraft for a year-end launch. AstroForge’s round was led by Nova Threshold and joined by 776, Initialized, Caladan, Y Combinator, Uncorrelated Ventures, and Jed McCaleb. The money will go toward the company’s third mission, a spacecraft that will attempt the first private landing on an asteroid after a 2025 launch. (source: Payload)

Redondo Beach’s Impulse Space announced it has been selected by SpaceWERX, sponsored by the U.S. Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Space Safari Office, for a Strategic Funding Increase (STRATFI) award valued at $60 million. This funding, sourced from government funds, matching Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funds, and private investments, will support the development of Impulse Space’s high-performance kick stage, Helios. The project aims to address key challenges in geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO) for the Department of the Air Force (DAF). (source: Space Impulse)

True Anomaly has received $20 million in capital support from Stifel. (source: x.com/AtomsNotBits)

Silicon Valley-based startup Muon Space announced it has secured $56.7 million in Series B funding. The fundraising round was led by Activate Capital, with participation from Acme Capital and existing investors Costanoa Ventures, Radical Ventures, and Congruent Ventures. The company said it plans to use the new capital to accelerate the development of its Halo low-Earth orbit satellite platform and scale operations. Muon Space reported it has secured over $100 million in committed customer contracts in 2024 for its smallsats. (source: SpaceNews)

Austin-based Aalo Atomics raised a $27 million Series A. This comes after a $6.26 million seed round last year. Investors included 50Y, Valor Equity Partners, Harpoon Ventures, Crosscut, SNR, Alumni Ventures, Preston Werner, Earth Venture, Garage Capital, Wayfinder, Jeff Dean, Nucleation Capital, and more. (source: X.com)

Colorado-based H3X scales up its electric aerospace ambitions with a $20 million A round. The funding round was led by Infinite Capital, with participation from Hanwha AM, Cubit Capital, Origin Ventures, Industrious Ventures, Venn10 Capital, as well as existing investors Lockheed Martin Ventures, Metaplanet, Liquid 2 Ventures and TechNexus. (source: TechCrunch)

Battery-electric railcar startup Intramotev has raised $14.4 million in a Series A funding round as it looks to continue expanding its world-first retrofit technology. The company revealed its “oversubscribed” funding round was led by Flybridge Capital Partners and Alpaca VC and included Advantage Capital, Aera VC, Band VC, Cantos, Collide Capital, Decisive Point, and Idealab Arizona, as well as investment from industry partners, including private rail platform company Cathcart Rail. (source: yahoo! finance)

AGREEMENTS, PARTNERSHIPS, & CONTRACTS

El Segundo-based Cambium and Salt Lake City’s Checkerspot announced they have formed a collaboration focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of bio-based, impact-resistant, high-temperature and flame-retardant foam products and composite-foam systems. This collaboration underscores Cambium's and Checkerspot's commitment to addressing critical capability and supply chain gaps to support current and future high-performance hardware needs across land, air, sea, and space applications for a broad range of defense and commercial applications. (source: Business Wire)

Proteus Space signed its first Launch Services Agreement (LSA) and is now manifested for Oct 2025. It will be a payload-tailored, custom ESPA LEO bus & satellite/SV. (source: LinkedIn)

Hadrian announced they bought Datum Source, a software company founded by SpaceX alums that uses AI to help hardware companies find manufacturing partners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Datum Source has raised $5.6 million at a valuation of $30 million, according to PitchBook. With Datum Source, Hadrian can help match a startup with specific manufacturers any time it needs a new part, instead of the founders otherwise searching through hundreds of potential suppliers, Power said. As a bonus, the acquisition brought Hadrian about 30 of Datum’s existing customers, with the bulk being early-stage startups. The company will also bring on Datum Source’s 14-person team to help guide early-stage companies through the procurement process. (source: TechCrunch)

Los Angeles-based satellite manufacturing startup Apex has sold the first GEO Aries - a version of its Aries small satellite bus - to an undisclosed government customer for delivery in mid-2026 and launch by the end of 2026. The company is offering GEO Aries for $13.5 million. (source: SpaceNews)

Lockheed Martin is buying smallsat manufacturer Terran Orbital, months after the company dropped earlier plans for an acquisition. Lockheed said it would buy Terran Orbital for $0.25 per share in cash and retire the company’s existing debt. The deal, expected to close in the fourth quarter, has an enterprise value of $450 million. Shares in Terran Orbital closed on August 14 at $0.40. Lockheed already owns one-third of Terran Orbital from past investments and has a strategic partnership, buying smallsat buses from the company for use on Lockheed programs such as Space Development Agency contracts. (source: SpaceNews)

Costa Mesa-based Anduril is expanding into Japan. Anduril and Sumisho Aero-Systems will partner together to demonstrate how the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force can use Lattice for mesh networking and command and control for defense, dynamic fires, mission planning, and unmanned systems. “The contract is an important step forward for Anduril in supporting a critical ally of the US and Australia amid an increasingly complex geopolitical environment,” said David Goodrich OAM, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Anduril Australia and Asia Pacific. (source: LinkedIn)

Santa Monica-based Outpost has been busy landing four new contracts. It was selected for a $33.2 million Air Force STRATFI contract to develop Earth return vehicles for hypersonic testing and re-entry missions. This award supports four missions with Outpost’s Ferryall vehicle and the development of Carryall, which is capable of returning up to 10 tons of cargo. This news comes just after Outpost announced $3 million in contracts from the Air Mobility Command and the Rocket Cargo program to develop on-orbit warehousing and re-entry systems for point-to-point delivery missions. Two more contacts: The AFRL Rocket Cargo program awarded Outpost $1.8 million this week to continue the development of their Earth return technology. Finally, the company won a $1.25 million Space GARAGE contract with the Air Force to develop and test Ferryall and Carryall’s ability to store cargo in orbit for extended periods of time before delivering them anywhere on Earth. (source: Payload)

Colorado’s Orbit Fab announced its RAFTI™ (Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface) refueling port was designated by the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) as a refueling interface for in-space fueling of military satellites. The SSC’s System Engineering Review Board (SERB) made the recommendation following mission-critical assessments that RAFTI meets the technical qualifications to support a wide range of U.S. Government space missions. (source: OrbitFab.com)

Mountain View’s Muon Space revealed a new agreement with aerospace and defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) to produce three satellites for SNC’s Vindlér commercial radio-frequency remote sensing system. The first Vindler satellites are scheduled for launch in 2025. (source: SpaceNews)

REAL ESTATE CORNER

How I bring my clients the rare “good” unexpected results in real estate transactions. Btw, let’s connect on X.

JOB BOARD

Ares Industries is looking for aerospace engineers to help them build “a new class of anti-ship cruise missiles. We are going to deliver the capabilities that the DoD wants in a form factor that’s 10x smaller and 10x cheaper.”

WHAT I’M CONSUMING (AND ENJOYING!) 

🛫 Curious about autonomous aviation? Check out what Sift is up to.

✈ This Wired article goes into detail on the US Defense Department’s strategy for protecting Taiwan from a massive Chinese military offensive on Taiwan: flooding the zone with thousands of drones.

🦈 I like Outpost's Jaws-inspired announcement on their new space shipping container, Carryall, which features a video on X (see above).

🌬 Heimdal Inc., a pioneer in direct air capture (DAC) carbon dioxide removal technology, celebrated the launch in Oklahoma of Bantam, its debut DAC facility. With a nameplate capacity of more than 5,000 tons of CO₂ capturable from the atmosphere annually, Bantam is currently the largest constructed DAC facility in the USA and the second largest constructed DAC facility in the world.

If you’re not already a Space Dirt subscriber, what are you waiting for?!

Thanks for reading.

If you’d like your office and/or manufacturing space or business profiled - or even your city! - let me know. It’s always fun to explore and share the different components of the hard tech industry.

Erik Stiebel
Founder and Vice President
CA DRE License #02080746
424.241.4795 | [email protected] 
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P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you with your real estate.

1. A new home for your growing business. The good news - you’re growing! The bad news - you need to move, and you don’t know the real estate market. I can help.

2. Sublease your space. You’ve outgrown your space and need to move but don’t want to pay two rents? I got you.

3. Time to renew your lease? Want to make sure you’re getting a fair deal from your Landlord? In my experience, you can never be too certain. (BTW, I recommend starting the lease renewal process 12 months out at a minimum.)

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