WASHINGTON — In-space transportation firm Momentus says it’s making good progress towards the first launch of its Vigoride house tug, however that the schedule is “tight” for a launch in June.
In an earnings name March 8 after the discharge of its fourth quarter and full yr 2021 monetary outcomes, firm executives stated its Vigoride 3 tug just lately accomplished system-level thermal vacuum testing, and engineers are presently engaged on unspecified points with the spacecraft discovered throughout these checks.
“We continue to believe that our Vigoride 3 is on a path to complete ground tests in time for our inaugural launch, planned for June, although the schedule is tight,” stated John Rood, chief govt of Momentus.
The firm faces each technical and regulatory obstacles to getting the tug launched in June. In addition to the engineering work on the spacecraft, the corporate additionally has to safe a Federal Communications Commission license, a Federal Aviation Administration payload evaluation and what Rood known as a “slight modification” to its current National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration imaging license.
“We currently plan our inaugural mission with Vigoride in June of 2022, subject to the receipt of those licenses and government approvals, and completion of the work to get the system ready,” he stated. Momentus has filed a license software with the FCC and began discussions with the FAA.
Licensing proved to be a problem for Momentus in 2021, when it was compelled to postpone launches of an earlier model of its Vigoride tug on two SpaceX rideshare missions in January and June when it was unable to get an FAA payload evaluation. Government businesses raised issues concerning the firm’s Russian co-founders, which led to the corporate shopping for them out and implementing a nationwide safety settlement with the Defense and Treasury Departments.
Rood stated the corporate was making “significant progress” implementing that settlement, with a deal with modernizing its data expertise techniques. “The IT modernization plan was a heavy lift for the company, but we’ve implemented the bulk of this modernization plan now.”
In a submitting with the Securities and Exchange Commission March 9, the corporate famous that it made two voluntary notifications to the Commerce Department final yr of inadvertent transfers of data and {hardware} which are managed underneath the Export Administration Regulations to entities in Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland and Singapore. The firm stated it’s awaiting a ruling from the division on any potential penalties from these transfers.
He emphasised that Vigoride 3, when it does launch, will primarily be a expertise demonstration mission of the car, which is designed to deploy satellites into totally different orbits in addition to accommodate hosted payloads. “We also plan to take some customer payloads to orbit and generate a small amount of revenue from this mission,” he stated. “However, the primary goals of the mission are to test Vigoride on orbit, learn from any issues that we encounter and take important steps toward establishing the viability of our initial market offering.”
Vigoride 3 is presently scheduled to fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-5 devoted rideshare mission in June. Momentus stated it has signed an settlement with SpaceX for a second port on that launch, in addition to house on the following 4 Transporter rideshare missions, scheduled for launch from October 2022 and October 2023. Those further launches function each backups if Vigoride 3 is delayed in addition to for future missions.
The second port on Transporter-5 will probably be used for prospects that don’t want the in-space transportation companies that Vigoride gives, and at a cheaper price. Rood stated Momentus will purchase a deployer from a “trusted partner” he didn’t determine for that second port. “While this system cannot provide the last-mile transportation service that Vigoride can, it is less expensive and the meets the needs of some of the customers in our backlog.”
“We’re not certain whether this approach will be part of our long-term plans, and what we’re doing doesn’t require any upfront investment to develop the hardware or introduce the service,” he stated. “As we go forward, we’ll determine whether this part of the market provides sufficient growth and profitability opportunities for us to include it on a more permanent basis.”
Momentus reported no income within the fourth quarter of 2021 and simply $330,000 for the complete yr. It reported an adjusted earnings earlier than curiosity, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) loss of $59.4 million for 2021. Jikun Kim, chief monetary officer of the corporate, stated the corporate had sufficient money to go to the “earlier part” of 2023.