On November 4, 2021, iRocket announced that the company signed an agreement with Turion Space Corp in Irvine, CA. Said iRocket CEO Asad Malik, “We are excited about this new partnership with Turion Space to provide rapid access to space and cost competitive launch costs for their 20 Droid satellites and the low-cost final orbit delivery option their Droid satellites will bring to some of our own customers.”
iRocket is a New York startup building 100% fully reusable rockets since 2018 to cargo micro, nano, cube, and constellations to LEO orbit on its Shockwave launch vehicle. The company develops cost-effective launch vehicles that can support rapid launching within 24 hrs. for 400kg and 1500 kg payloads for satellite constellation providers for National security satellites, 5G internet constellations, the Internet of Things (IoT), Biotech Research, and Space exploration. In addition, there reusable upper stage will target space junk removal in LEO orbit. iRocket is currently funded by the U.S. Space Force – Space Systems Command, The M&J Engineering Group, & Village Global a venture capital firm backed by Bill Gates, Eric Schmidt, Jeffrey Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Abby Johnson.
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Said Turion Space CEO Ryan Westerdahl, “Turion Space looks forward to a strong partnership with iRocket for access to space and for providing us with a pipeline of future customers that will utilize the final orbit delivery services our Droid spacecraft can provide.”
Turion Space is building spacecraft to remove orbital-debris and provide orbit-modification and domain-awareness services to existing space assets. Solving space debris is a crucial problem that must be solved to ensure a sustainable LEO economy and is the first technological step towards mining Asteroids. Turion Space plans to launch their D-1 satellite in October 2022. Solving this problem is crucial to ensure a sustainable space economy and is the first step towards our longer-term vision of mining Asteroids. Turion Space is funded by Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Forward VC, Pi Campus, FoundersX Ventures, Harvard Management Company, Imagination VC, among several others.
The two companies also hinted at possible future collaborations on in-orbit servicing. Westerdahl suggested that Turion could work with iRocket to perform final in-orbit deliveries for a fraction of the launch company’s payload, combined with space junk removal.