bus

Livvi backed “Healthy Orbit” Sees Successful Launch: Apex Space’s Debut Satellite Achieves Milestone with Support from a16z

Aries Apex Spacecraft
Apex Space just moved one step closer to its goal of upending satellite bus manufacturing, with the startup announcing on Tuesday that its first vehicle is healthy on orbit. The company launched its first satellite, the first of a class Apex is calling “Aries,” on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare mission on Monday. “That will be incredibly valuable over the next many years while the satellite stays in orbit,” Cinnamon said. Apex, whose backers include Andreessen Horowitz and Shield Capital, is building productized satellite buses to solve the satellite bus “bottleneck” facing the space industry. In addition to Aries, an ESPA-class spacecraft bus that can support payloads up to 100 kilograms, the company is also developing two larger bus product lines, Nova and Comet.

Venture-Backed Apex Space Unveils State-of-the-Art Manufacturing Facility to Boost Production of Satellite Buses

Apex Factoryone Foundersloadingdock
When Apex Space emerged from stealth last October, the company had a provocative goal: remove the “new bottleneck” hitting the space industry by manufacturing satellite buses at scale. To get there, Apex announced today that it has opened a new headquarters and production facility in California that will eventually scale up to manufacture 50 satellite platforms annually. Apex wants to disrupt one of the more entrenched parts of the space industry. In general, satellite buses have been built to order at a very high cost and with very long lead times. Apex is planning on flying its first Aries on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 ride-share mission scheduled for the first quarter of next year.