Los Angeles-based startup Apex Space will launch its first satellite bus next January, part of its bet that spacecraft mass manufacturing will enable humanity’s greater expansion into the cosmos.
The company will launch its Aries spacecraft, which will be equipped with multiple customer payloads, on board SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare mission. Aries, the first in a line of planned satellite buses, will be capable of a maximum 200 kilograms of wet mass and a 100 kilogram payload capacity to low Earth orbit.
To Apex co-founder Ian Cinnamon’s knowledge, this first mission will mark the fastest time a company has ever moved from clean sheet to launch for this size class of satellite, he told TechCrunch in a recent interview.
Moving fast is the point. Apex, which came out of stealth last fall with $7.5 million in seed funding, was founded b...
