SpinLaunch

SpinLaunch is an American space technology company, founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney and headquartered in Long Beach, California, that has created an alternative method for putting satellites into orbit. Rather than relying on the chemical propulsion that dominates the launch industry, SpinLaunch's Orbital Launch System uses a rotating carbon-fiber arm inside a 100-meter-diameter steel vacuum chamber to accelerate a launch vehicle to speeds of up to 8,000 kph before release, eliminating up to 70 percent of the fuel and structural mass required by a typical rocket. After the vehicle ascends above the stratosphere, a small, inexpensive propulsive upper stage provides the final velocity needed for orbital insertion.

As a proving ground for this technology, SpinLaunch built and operates the Suborbital Accelerator at Spaceport America in New Mexico — a 33-meter-span vacuum chamber, the largest of its kind ever built, capable of launching test payloads at velocities of 800 to 5,000 mph. Since its first test flights, the system has conducted numerous suborbital launches with a variety of test vehicles and payloads, and the facility now also offers testing services to outside customers and serves as a satellite-qualification and lunar-testing facility.

SpinLaunch's satellite business, Meridian Space, is developing a proliferated, low-cost LEO satellite communications constellation built around small, efficient high-performance microsatellites (around 70 kg each) designed to be built and launched cheaply. Meridian targets enterprise, government and defense customers with an enterprise-first broadband architecture offering multiple terabits per second of global capacity, 5G NTN-compatible, waveform-agnostic connectivity, and constellations that customers can own outright or as dedicated regional capacity.

Together, the kinetic launch platform and the Meridian satellite constellation represent SpinLaunch's vertically integrated approach: driving down the cost of both getting satellites to orbit and operating them once there.