Former Made in Space and Redwire leaders Andrew Rush and Michael Snyder are launching a new venture called Star Catcher Industries to build the first power grid in space and bring more power to satellites in low earth orbit (LEO)
Rush, the former CEO of Made in Space and founding president and COO of Redwire, told the online publication Via Satellite about the need to deliver higher power to LEO. He observed that available power is a common constraint across every spacecraft with today’s satellites in LEO operating on around 1 000 to 1 500 watts, which Rush compared to the power used by a refrigerator.
At the same time, capabilities like high-bandwidth communications, satellite-to-cell connectivity and advanced processing units require more power, as much as 5 000 to 20 000 watts, comparable to the power used by a home or a small industrial park.
“We have this geographic concentration of customers in LEO that all have a common need,” Rush said. “We’re trying to build a power grid so we can send people more power to their existing solar arrays. They don’t have to fly a special transceiver to work with us.”
The company is planning for a series of satellites in high LEO, around 1 500 to 2 000 km in altitude, to collect a large amount of solar energy and transmit it to multiple client satellites at the same time. Rush said Star Catcher will be able to cover LEO space with about 200 spacecraft, which will each serve as a power node.
The Star Catcher network will operate as shared infrastructure, similar to cell towers, with multiple satellite operators using the service.
“It is a pay-as-you-go network. People will pay us just like you pay your power utility to operate but that enables folks to keep their initial capex the same or even shrink expenditure,” added Rush.
He said this will allow customers to continue using small form-factor satellites but perform much more power-hungry missions.
Potential customers include any situation where high power is valuable whether it is remote sensing or communications for commercial and defence. The Space Development Agency, for example, has called for technologies to enhance the power available to commoditised spacecraft buses.
The Star Catcher network could also be valuable for constellation life extension when batteries and solar power arrays have degraded over time or to recover from mishaps when solar arrays don’t deploy fully or have issues.
Rush said the response from conversations with the industry have been positive and the company has signed around half a dozen letters of intent with a variety of different customers including remote-sensing and space-based telecommunications firms, commercial space habitat companies and several others.
The company is currently going through make-versus-buy decisions. Star Catcher will likely build the core power transmission system but source some subsystems.
Star Catcher is working towards an upcoming ground demonstration of the technology, which will be followed by a demonstration mission set for December 2025.
Rush said there’s a need and customer base for a power grid in space with the number of satellites operating in LEO. “I think the reason that this hasn’t been done yet is because we haven’t had this nexus of technological availability and a geographic concentration of customers”, Rush says. “The adoption of LEO as the primary place where people do business in space and operate in space makes it easier for us to service those customers and makes this a ‘now’ opportunity.”
