Investors recently bought $11.5 million worth of SpinLaunch stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from the Long Beach aerospace company.

According to the filing from Nov. 21, there were 28 investors involved with the stock sale. The filing was signed by David Wrenn, the chief executive of the company.

Wrenn told Payload, an online space industry publication, that the funding would speed the development of the rockets and satellites that can survive 10,000Gs inside of it. 

 “We recently moved on to demonstrating integrated satellites,” Wrenn told Payload. “The next phase, obviously, is building out an orbital-capable launch system.” 

The company last raised a $71 million series B financing round in September 2022 from 25 investors.

SpinLaunch is developing a new way to launch rockets to low-Earth orbit – through a kinetic accelerator.

Here’s how the company’s kinetic launch system works: a tether spins inside a vacuum chamber, a steel chamber measuring 300 feet in diameter. The low pressure inside the chamber allows the tether to spin at 5,000 miles per hour with minimal heating.

The tether, which is made from carbon fiber, reaches launch speed from an electric motor. The launch vehicle is attached to the end of the tether, and when the right speed is reached, it is released from the tether and sent through an exit tunnel, where it is directed into space and then launches its satellite.

The company has done 10 test launches from a smaller, suborbital accelerator at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

According to TechCrunch, an online publication covering startups and technology that first reported the stock sale, there have been signs that SpinLaunch is going through a period of flux as it looks to commercialize its launch system.

In October of last year, SpinLaunch named two new board members, including aerospace veteran Domhnal Slattery as chair, a new role for the company. Then in March, the board appointed Wrenn, who had been the chief operating officer, as chief executive. He replaced Jonathan Yaney, the founder of the company.

“Amidst the leadership shake-up, the company had been quietly pursuing a very small Alaskan island as the site for its first orbital accelerator,” the TechCrunch story said. “SpinLaunch signed a (memorandun of understanding) to convey its intent to site its accelerator in Adak, Alaska, around 18 months ago.”

The Adak city council later sent a letter of support for the plans to The Aleut Corp., the Alaska Native regional corporation that SpinLaunch has been working with, the TechCrunch story continued.

Adak city manager Layton Lockett told TechCrunch that the letter of support, which was sent April 17, is the “last substantive update” on the city’s involvement with either SpinLaunch or Aleut.

In his response to TechCrunch, Wrenn “did not directly address the company’s plans…to build an orbital accelerator in Adak. However, he added that the company has met its investment and revenue objectives this year, and that the new financing ‘will help accelerate the commercialization of our disruptive space technologies and advance SpinLaunch’s integrated suite of low-cost, sustainable space solutions.’”