A pair of brothers is aiming to challenge the way spacecraft are built, by going against the industry trend and designing massive satellites in a bet that towering rockets such as SpaceX’s Starship are the way forward.Los Angeles-based startup K2 Space, co-founded by CEO Karan Kunjur and CTO Neel Kunjur, is setting out to build satellite buses — the physical structure of a spacecraft that provides power, movement and more.While manufacturers have recently pushed to optimize spacecraft by designing as light and compact as possible, with small satellites in the range of tens to hundreds of kilograms, K2 is going the other way and designing systems that would be on par with some of the largest spacecraft ever built.“The only path to go cheaper over the last decade was to go smaller. What we’re finding is that, with the new launch capabilities of vehicles like Starship, there’s actually an interesting opportunity to go the opposite direction,” Karan Kunjur told CNBC.The cost per kilogram to deliver spacecraft to orbit has also come down, thanks to increased competition in the rocket launch market the past few years. And K2 sees opportunity beyond just Starship, from rockets in the “heavy” and “super heavy” classes, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, to those in development like United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, or Relativity’s Terran R.“We’re really building this thing to be launch vehicle agnostic, planning for a world where there are going to be multiple launch providers,” Karan Kunjur said.K2 Space, a play on the brothers’ surname and a nod to astronomer Nikolai Kardashev’s scales of civilization, marks Karan and Neel’s first venture together and fuses their previously divergent careers. The former spent 10 years at Boston Consulting Group engaged in company turnarounds and acquisitions, before becoming a vice president at artificial intelligence startup Text IQ before it was acquired in 2021. The latter cut his teeth at SpaceX, where he spent about six years developing systems for its Dragon spacecraft, which now fly cargo and crew to the International Space Station. Then he went to electric aircraft company Kittyhawk for a couple of years before realizing that he wanted to return to the space business.“Our goal is to follow similar engineering principles that we followed at SpaceX but apply them at a different scale that really hasn’t been explored before in the industry,” Neel Kunjur said.Since its incorporation in June, K2 has raised $8.5 million in a seed round led by First Round Capital and Republic Capital, and joined by Countdown Capital, Boost VC, Also Capital, Side Door Ventures, Earthrise Ventures, Spacecadet VC and Pathbreaker Ventures. Its backers have invested in a variety of space companies previously, such as First Round’s early backing of now public satellite company Planet.The brothers have hired seven people so far to join them — bringing on talent with prior experience at SpaceX, Maxar, Arianespace, Blue Origin and more — and are in negotiations to secure a 15,000-square-foot factory in the Torrance, California, area.K2 has also built an enviable roster of advisors, such as former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, former SpaceX director of the Commercial Crew and Cargo program Abhi Tripathi, former SES chief technology officer Martin Halliwell, and Lee Rosen, former U.S. Air Force space launch group commander and SpaceX vice president of mission and launch operations.For K2, the company is targeting prices that would be unheard of for satellite buses of these sizes. So far it’s planning to build the K2 Mega, a class for up to one ton of payload mass at $15 million each, and the K2 Giga, a class for up to 15 tons of payload at $30 million each. They believe they can achieve those price points by developing new systems such as power, attitude control, thermal control and more.“Our spacecraft are very, very different than any of the large or small satellites that exist today. We have to go relook at the components and do a lot of in-house development to design new technologies to trade mass and cost in a new way,” Neel Kunjur said.K2 has so far received a pair of small development awards from the government and said potential customers for commercial, science, and defense applications have signed early agreements.“We envision a future where we’re the platform that allows them to relax those constraints and be able to build the payloads that they’ve always wanted to that sit on top of this platform,” Karan Kunjur said.The company plans to launch its first Mega class spacecraft in 2024, before going for a first flight with customers in 2025.“Knowing firsthand from SpaceX the importance of iteration, we want to improve our learning cycles so that we can get to space, learn from those components, see how they operate in the space environment, and tweak those designs in anticipation of our full launch in 2025,” Neel Kunjur said.“If we get this right there’s a potential for a step change in how we operate in space,” Karan Kunjur added.
Exclusive – Meet K2 Space, the startup led by brothers Karan & Neel Kunjur, designing and building massive spacecraft:“With the new launch capabilities of vehicles like Starship, there's actually an interesting opportunity to go the opposite direction.”
.@K2SpaceCo is designing two classes of satellite busses:Mega, for up to 1 ton of payload mass at $15mGiga, for up to 15 tons of payload mass at $30mFrom the company’s pitch deck:https://cnbc.com/2023/03/10/k2-space-startup-building-massive-spacecraft.html
Incorporated last June, K2 is 9 strong so far.It's also built a roster of enviable advisors: Lori Garver, Abhi Tripathi, Rob Lillis, Lee Rosen, and Martin Halliwell.https://cnbc.com/2023/03/10/k2-space-startup-building-massive-spacecraft.html
A new startup is coming out of stealth to build satellite busses for Starship-sized payloads: their K2 Mega bus is for one-ton satellites and will cost $15M, while their K2 Giga bus is for 15-ton satellites and will cost $30M.https://www.k2space.com/
Introducing K2 Space: Building Satellites for a Post-Starship FutureBreathtaking images from The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are unlocking breakthrough science for the world. While JWST is the most advanced telescope ever developed, it's easy to forget that the road to its launch was filled with a series of tradeoffs driven by harsh mass and volume constraints. These constraints imposed complexity, cost, and development time which ultimately contributed to a 20+ year timeline and $10B program cost. The mass and volume constraints that plagued the JWST program continue to shape satellites today. Satellite operators face two choices:-Large, exquisite satellites with high payload mass and power but high cost-Small, low-performance satellites with low payload mass and power but low costThese restrictions hold back humanity’s ability to deploy even more ambitious spacecraft to survey the galaxy, explore other planets, and deliver meaningful services for everyone on Earth.We’re about to move from an era of mass constraint to mass abundance.A single Starship launching at a cadence of three times per week is capable of delivering more mass to orbit in a single year than humanity has launched to date. Multiple Starships operating at even higher cadences offer the potential to exceed this delivered mass by almost two orders of magnitude.This staggering launch capacity raises important questions: What exactly is going to be in all of these Starships? Starlink will certainly consume some of this capacity, but how will the rest of the space industry tap into this incredible capacity? If SpaceX delivers on the cost and performance targets of Starship, the satellite industry is not prepared to make full use of it.Breaking the correlation between mass and costAt K2 Space, we are developing large satellites for a post-Starship world. We’re going to forever break the close correlation between satellite size and cost in order to open up a third and better option: highly capable, low cost satellites.Developing a satellite that breaks off the mass and cost curve requires re-thinking its entire design from the reaction wheel up. We’ve applied a new philosophy of trading mass and cost to develop novel attitude control systems, high power systems, and highly capable thermal systems that all operate in a regime far outside of the capabilities of small satellites today.Our satellite buses are designed to allow operators and payload designers to abandon the game of tradeoffs that has stunted many applications to date. Our Mega Class satellite bus will offer the payload mass, power, and volume of today’s exquisite large satellites at the price point of today’s small satellites. Our Giga Class satellite bus will push this concept even further as the largest and highest power commercial satellite ever deployed in space. These satellites will unlock the full capability of LEO, MEO, GEO, and beyond when paired with launch vehicles like F9, Starship, and New Glenn.Making previously impossible missions possibleThe K2 Space satellite buses will allow mission designers to tap into the full capabilities of these new launch vehicles:-Large commercial operators will finally be able to make the business case close on a 20kW+ satellite constellation in LEO or MEO (where the price per unit is $15M instead of $150M)-New space companies will finally have an option to operate at scale, deploying remote sensing payloads, robotic servicing platforms, and other infrastructure that will provide the foundation for future space development-Scientists will be able to deploy powerful, low cost probes to explore the solar system and develop cost effective telescopes that use the full 8m volume of Starship to examine the stars-Defense end-users will be able to develop resilient space architecture, achieving proliferation through affordability without sacrificing performance or speed of delivery (we’ve received a Phase I SBIR and STTR, multiple customer memorandums and five letters of support so far) We see K2 as the bedrock for these future space applications, helping make previously impossible missions possible.From an idea on (wall)paper to an experienced team We’re brothers, and as kids we moved into a new house where one bedroom had an entire wall covered with a wallpaper depiction of the Earthrise (the Earth rising over the moon). We fought over that prized room. Eventually, big brother (Karan) privileges prevailed, but it was little brother (Neel) who dedicated his life to endeavors in space. He spent five years at SpaceX, helping develop the avionics systems for each Dragon spacecraft and acting as a Mission Director for several missions. Meanwhile, Karan built new businesses, most recently helping scale an AI startup from seed through successful exit. With K2, we’ve brought together a team of engineers who’ve worked on Dragon, Starlink, and Kuiper with advisors across science (former Deputy Administrator of NASA), defense (former Space Launch Group Commander at the USAF) and commercial (former CTO of SES). We’re excited to introduce each of them over the coming weeks. We’ve raised an $8.5M seed round co-led by First Round Capital and Republic Capital, with participation from leading deep tech investors Boost VC, Also Capital, and Countdown Capital among others. Our cap table includes ex-SpaceXers, founders, and investors who are all excited by the potential for K2 Space to change the way we operate in space. Accelerating the sci-fi future that was always promisedOur plan is to tackle discrete, concrete steps in order to build a practical path to a sci-fi future. We’re starting with components, developing prototypes of the reaction wheel, power systems, avionics, and other systems. We’re going to take these components and put them in space in a 2024 demo mission, getting heritage on these systems while taking an important step towards being a real space company. From there, we’re targeting a 2025 launch of our mega class satellite to show what’s possible with this new design paradigm. The astronomer Nikolai Kardashev famously came up with the Kardashev scale as a measure of a civilization’s technological advancement. A Kardashev Type I civilization, or K1, is able to harness all of the energy that reaches its planet. A Type II civilization, or K2, can harness the energy radiated by its star. We’ll never be able to build the superstructures envisioned for a K2 civilization (like a Dyson sphere) in the old mass constrained way. It's only by breaking the correlation between spacecraft size and cost that we can achieve this future, which is why we call ourselves K2 Space. It’s going to be a wild ride — reach out if you’re interested in becoming a part of the journey.
Quote from: trimeta on 03/10/2023 02:51 pmA new startup is coming out of stealth to build satellite busses for Starship-sized payloads: their K2 Mega bus is for one-ton satellites and will cost $15M, while their K2 Giga bus is for 15-ton satellites and will cost $30M.https://www.k2space.com/1 and 15 tons of payload, which I'd estimate means that the whole satellite could weigh up to ~5 tons for the Mega and maybe ~50+ tons for the Giga. A useful payload is usually just a small fraction of a satellite's total launch mass, on the order of 10-30% IIRC.
Oh, for the ~50+ tonne K2 Giga satellite, would really need some sort of large space tug for orbit raising. Maybe a stripped down and reduce length Starship variant.
and we're live! come hang out with @KaranKunjur from @K2SpaceCo to talk about real big chonker sat busses
K2 Space has closed a Series A funding round, raising $50M.https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/startup-k2-space-raises-50-million.html
Nearly two years since founding, K2 co-founders and brothers CEO Karan Kunjur and Chief Technology Officer Neel Kunjur expect to launch their first satellite on a demonstration mission later this year.
