when apex space The company, which came out of stealth last October, had the provocative goal of eliminating “new bottlenecks” plaguing the space industry by building satellite buses at scale.
To get there, Apex announced today that it will open a new headquarters and production facility in California and eventually scale up to manufacture 50 satellite platforms per year. Apex CEO Ian Cinnamon said in a statement that the new 46,000-square-foot facility is “vital to meeting customer demand.”
“Our customers want spacecraft with short lead times, and Factory One delivers that,” he said.
Apex wants to disrupt one of the most entrenched parts of the space industry. Satellite buses are generally made to order, which means their costs are very high and delivery times are very long. However, major changes in the industry, such as the reduction in the cost of mass launches into space, have opened up a whole new group of customers looking to send payloads into orbit.
The company plans to initially offer three satellite bus classes. One is a smaller 100 kilogram bus called Aries, which can support a payload of up to 100 kilograms. The motorcoach, called Nova, can accommodate a payload of up to 230 kg. The even larger bus “Comet” can carry up to 500 kilograms. Apex plans to fly the first Aries on SpaceX’s Transporter 10 rideshare mission, scheduled for the first quarter of next year.
Apex aims to expand the factory in the coming years. The company currently plans to deliver five Aries platforms to customers in 2024 and aims to increase production to 20 aircraft by 2025.
The company has raised at least $23.5 million in seed and Series A funding from backers including Andreessen Horowitz and Shield Capital.
Source: techcrunch.com
