Star Catcher banks $12.25 million for orbital energy grid
- by SpaceNews
- Jul 24, 2024
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Star Catcher Industries
SAN FRANCISCO – Star Catcher Industries, a startup focused on beaming solar energy to spacecraft in low-Earth orbit, raised $12.25 million in a seed round announced July 24.
Former Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush teamed up earlier this year with Michael Snyder, Made In Space co-founder and former chief engineer, and space investor Bryan Lyandvert to establish Star Catcher. The company is based in Jacksonville, Florida.
“For the first time, technologically and from a business perspective a space-to-space power grid makes sense,” Rush told SpaceNews. “We have a good handle on the technology. And for the first time, there is a geographic concentration of customers in low-Earth orbit that all have a common need. They want more power.”
Star Catcher plans to deliver broad solar spectrum energy on demand to each client spacecraft’s solar arrays. The Star Catcher space-based energy grid is designed to provide spacecraft with five-to-10 times the amount of power they generate on their own.
In-Orbit Demonstration
Initialized Capital and B Capital co-led Star Catcher’s seed round. Rogue VC also participated in a “meaningful” way, according to the news release.
With the funding, Star Catcher intends to roughly double its 11-person staff. In addition, the company plans to perform ground and space-based demonstrations of its technology.
An initial ground-based demonstration will “show the end-to-end system functioning,” Rush said. In December 2025, Star Catcher plans to demonstrate a sub-scale version of its power nodes in orbit.
“We’ll get flight heritage on collecting, conditioning and redirecting solar spectrum to power a client’s satellite,” Rush said.
Potential Applications
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