Outpost Technologies Corp. announced the closing of a $7.1 million funding round on Aug. 30. The seed round was led by Moonshots Capital, with participation from Draper Associates, Starlight Ventures, Kittyhawk Ventures, AIR Capital, Starburst Ventures, Shasta Ventures and others. The company will use the funding to advance technology development and build its team.

The company, which was founded in 2021, developed and flight-tested a novel re-entry method that enables satellites to safely return to Earth with precision landing. This technology is designed to not only make single-use satellites obsolete, but also enable the broader aerospace market to attain dedicated payload return to Earth. The first Outpost satellite will be launched and tested next year.

“Outpost is reimagining, from first principles, how a satellite mission would change if the satellite were reusable,” Jason Dunn, chief executive and co-founder at Outpost, said in a statement. “We believe that our approach will be the default expectation of the market over the coming years and that the current single-use satellite approach will eventually disappear. It is a game-changer for our customers.”

By flying payloads with Outpost, users can put their products into space, iterate, and learn how they performed in use. Craig Cummings, partner at Moonshots, said in a release that the reusability for rockets has transformed launches and that the Outpost team “will lead an equally important disruption in satellite operations that is critical for the $270 billion satellite industry to reach its full potential.”

“The only available options for returning satellites to Earth are costly and inefficient,” Michael Vergalla, chief technology officer and co-founder at Outpost, said in a release. “Our two-stage re-entry system offers low-mass, high-efficiency Earth return, and our advanced autonomous paraglider technology delivers unparalleled landing precision for (the) full recovery of satellites from space.”