Space Capital

Fifty-three years ago, Apollo 17 parked the last Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon. No astronaut has driven on the lunar surface since. Lunar Outpost is building what comes next. In our latest Portfolio Spotlight, we highlight how a team with deep experience across human spaceflight, planetary resource utilization, avionics, and scientific instrumentation set out to industrialize lunar mobility, and build the infrastructure layer that the emerging lunar economy will depend on. In May, NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected Lunar Outpost to deliver a human-rated lunar terrain vehicle to the surface as part of its Moon Base program. Its Pegasus vehicle is designed to operate crewed, remotely from Earth, or fully autonomously, with a range of up to 900 kilometers and the ability to remain operational for a full year on the lunar surface. We funded Lunar Outpost at the Seed stage in 2022, convinced that a sustained lunar economy would require more than getting to the Moon. It would require reliable infrastructure for moving people, equipment, and resources once we get there. From a one-dollar contract that established the first commercial sale of space resources in history to NASA's selection of Pegasus for astronaut surface mobility, Lunar Outpost has been building toward that future from the beginning. Read the full deep dive to discover how Lunar Outpost's story, technology, and path toward making mobility a foundational layer of the interplanetary economy: https://bit.ly/3UuZiQ8

As we scale to meet growing customer demand, we’re taking another important step forward. We’ve selected Rocket Lab’s Neutron for Kepler’s first dedicated launch, scheduled no earlier than 2028. The mission is one of several launches planned for 2028 as we continue to add capacity and capabilities across our constellation. These next-generation satellites will advance our #realtime optical connectivity, on-orbit compute, and hosted payload capabilities, while supporting strategic commercial and government programs.  Explore solutions with Kepler: https://lnkd.in/gbng-x9S #SpaceTech #Launch #OpticalDataRelay #Satellites

We’ve always said that launch alone doesn't make a great business. Q2 delivered the proof of the corollary: access to orbit is a strategic advantage that enables launch companies to expand into more lucrative markets. This quarter, we introduced Launch+ as a new category, and the data tells a clear story. Launch+ already leads Infrastructure investment at $63 billion since 2009. Pure Launch totals just $18.3 billion. The gap reflects a fundamental truth: launch is a starting point, not an end market. Rocket Lab's $8 billion acquisition of Iridium wasn't a bet on satellites. It was a bet on spectrum and services. Iridium's L-band licenses are globally harmonized, working everywhere on Earth, and bring 2.5 million subscribers plus decades of government and safety-of-life contracts into direct-to-device, PNT, and aviation. Amazon paid $11.6 billion for Globalstar on the same logic. Space Capital portfolio companies Impulse Space and Eclipse Space are already building at this intersection, advancing in-space transportation and next-generation satellite capabilities that turn access to orbit into a platform for sustained commercial operations. The full breakdown is in the Q2 2026 Space IQ Report. Download your copy here: https://lnkd.in/gr8RsaRm

SC funded Impulse Space has introduced Electra, its first electric propulsion system, expanding the company's vision for end-to-end in-space mobility. Designed to complement Impulse's high-thrust chemical propulsion systems, Electra enables spacecraft to perform long-duration maneuvers more efficiently while preserving chemical propellant for time-critical operations. Together, these technologies give mission designers greater flexibility to move, adapt, and accomplish more throughout a mission. The announcement reflects a broader shift in the space economy: as access to orbit continues to improve, innovation is increasingly focused on the infrastructure and mobility technologies that unlock new capabilities beyond launch. Explore how Electra expands what's possible for in-space mobility: https://bit.ly/4brgb44

$67.7 billion invested in the space economy in the first half of 2026 alone. That already surpasses every full year on record. Space Capital's Q2 report dropped this week and the numbers are hard to ignore. Satellite investment hit $8.1 billion in H1, already past any previous annual total. Infrastructure companies collectively raised a quarterly record of $20.7 billion. And the SpaceX IPO generated $85.7 billion in proceeds, what Space Capital called the largest liquidity event in venture capital history. What do these numbers signal for the people building these companies? Capital is flowing into hard tech at a pace that would have looked implausible three years ago. The companies raising today aren't just launch vehicles and satellites. They're radar imaging, industrial AI, orbital data centers, advanced manufacturing. The definition of what counts as a space company is expanding fast. From where I sit, watching the talent market in real time, this matters enormously. More capital means more companies hiring. More companies hiring means more competition for the same pool of deeply technical people. And that pool isn't growing as fast as the funding is. The teams getting ahead of this are the ones treating talent strategy as seriously as fundraising strategy. Great reporting from Jason Rainbow at SpaceNews. Data from Space Capital's Q2 report. Links in the comments.

A company’s greatest advantage is the experience of the team behind it. From phased-array antennas to Starlink hardware, Eclipse Space's engineers bring decades of hands-on spacecraft development to the challenge of building the next generation of satellite constellations. At the 2026 Space Capital Summit, Eclipse Space Founder & CEO Derek Huerta discussed how Eclipse is rethinking satellite manufacturing and constellation design through a fabless model: https://bit.ly/4yUhBOt

The future of national security is increasingly being built by commercial space companies. That theme emerged repeatedly at the 2026 Space Capital Summit, where leaders discussed how defense procurement is evolving to access capabilities developed by the private sector, from proliferated sensing and tracking to in-space mobility. Last week's SpaceX announcement reinforces that shift. SpaceX has been awarded $1.6 billion by the U.S. Space Force for 18 Falcon 9 launches supporting critical national security missions. Another example of a broader trend reshaping the space economy: governments are moving faster, buying commercially, and relying on private industry to deliver the infrastructure that underpins modern defense. Look out for more from our Summit discussion on this topic coming soon. In the meantime, Reuters covers more on the SpaceX order here: https://bit.ly/3TwHsvV

Can you build a megaconstellation without a factory? Derek Huerta says yes, and he'd know. Seven years at SpaceX, building the phased arrays that connect Starlink satellites to the ground. His argument goes like this. Everyone looked at SpaceX, saw vertical integration, copied it. Wrong lesson. What actually worked was treating the terminal, the spacecraft, and the launch vehicle as one system instead of three, and borrowing manufacturing discipline from industries that had solved it decades earlier. Neither of those requires a factory. So Eclipse Space doesn't have one. They own the design, the architecture, the integration, the on-orbit operations. Production goes to partners, roughly how Apple builds iPhones. What that buys, in Huerta's words: 60-plus satellites a week, not 60 in a decade. That's the manufacturing case. The geopolitical one is simpler. A country can own its constellation outright instead of renting capacity on somebody else's network. Derek Huerta with Space Capital Operating Partner Tom Whayne at the 2026 Space Capital Summit. Eclipse came out of stealth that morning. We led their seed round. Watch it here: https://bit.ly/4yUhBOt

As missions to the Moon become more ambitious, autonomy will be just as important as mobility. SC funded Lunar Outpost plans to fly NVIDIA AI processors on upcoming lunar missions, enabling its rovers to process data onboard, navigate more autonomously, and reduce reliance on constant communication with Earth. The technology will help future rovers analyze sensor data in real time, generate high-resolution maps of the lunar surface, and make decisions in environments where communication delays make remote operations challenging. Explore how Lunar Outpost is bringing AI to the lunar surface on Payload: https://bit.ly/4b9Oi0m

Seven weeks after the largest IPO in history, how should investors think about SpaceX? Chad Anderson joined CNBC to discuss why the firm's long-term investment thesis remains unchanged. The conversation explores SpaceX's performance since going public, the significance of recent Starship progress, and why the company's ambitions across launch, connectivity, and AI continue to reinforce its long-term outlook. As Chad explains, short-term market movements don't change the fundamentals driving the next phase of the space economy. Watch the full analysis here: https://bit.ly/4fOTCHI