The reusable rocket has transformed the space industry in the last decade, and a new startup led by a SpaceX veteran wants to do the same for satellites.
Brian Taylor, who helped build satellites for networks like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo, founded Lux Aeterna in December 2024 to develop satellite structures with a built-in heat shield that will allow them to return to Earth with their payloads intact.
The company, which came out of stealth last year, announced a new $10 million seed round Tuesday morning led by Konvoy, with participation from Decisive Point, Cubit Capital, Wave Function, Space Capital, Dynamo Ventures, and Channel 39. The company declined to disclose its valuation.
The capital will support the design and construction of Lux Aeterna’s Delphi spacecraft, which has a confirmed spot on a SpaceX rocket expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027. That mission will prove out Lux’s technology by offering customers a chance to test hosted payloads and materials that will then be returned to Earth at Australia’s Koonibba Test Range through a partnership with the aerospace company Southern Launch.
Bringing anything back from space requires diving back into Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly high speeds, which generates extreme heat. Spacecraft that want to survive the journey must be covered in materials that protect them from that heat, adding extra weight. Because that weight makes getting to space on a rocket more expensive, most spacecraft aren’t designed for a return journey.
That calculus typically limits reentry to vehicles that carry humans, like the Space Shuttle (which saw one vehicle lost due to the extreme environment of reentry) or SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX’s repeated attempts to land its massive Starship rocket have made that challenge vivid for anyone who’s watched them on YouTube.
Startups like Varda Space and Inversion are tackling the same problem on a smaller scale: They are building reentry capsules that allow customers to perform experiments in space and return samples for analysis, or hypothetically deliver cargo to locations on Earth at high speed. Varda has flown five missions, returning capsules on four; Inversion hopes to launch its Arc vehicle sometime this year.
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