Company - In Orbit Aerospace
Product/Service - Retriever, Resource Exchange Module (REX)
- Classification
- Cargo Transportation & Landers
- Category
- Transport Service (Re-Entry)
Microgravity Flight Service (LEO)
Microgravity Flight Service (Reusable Satellite)
Persistent Platform
Robotic Space Station
- Fields
- Space Capsule
Automated Microgravity Laboratory
- Status
- Development
- First launch
- 2025
Orbital platforms hosting your factories and labs
Whether you are an independent researcher working make the next big discovery, or an enterprise looking to build at scale in microgravity, our platforms provide unmatched capabilities to support your mission.
Earth re-entry vehicles to safely return your products
Our re-entry vehicles harmonize with our orbital platforms to offer a seamless roundtrip service for your operations. Ride with us to your destination orbit, perform your mission, and get your products back for use on Earth.
- Two-year-old space startup In Orbit Aerospace wants to be the third-party logistics provider for Earth to space commerce — and to get there, the company just closed a new agreement to validate key technical capabilities on the International Space Station.
- The El Segundo, California-based company is developing orbital platforms and re-entry vehicles to enable mass manufacturing and research in space. In Orbit’s plans are more than a little ambitious: The idea is to host customers’ factories or labs on an orbital platform. Uncrewed reentry vehicles would autonomously dock and rendezvous with the platforms, and a robotic system would transfer the manufactured material to that vehicle, which would then bring the products back to Earth.
- To date, the company has raised around $2 million, and the team is currently fundraising to support a demonstration mission in early 2025.
- For that first mission, the company will work with a satellite bus provider that will host a subscale variant of its orbital platform and reentry vehicle. If all goes to plan, the mission will demonstrate transferring material from the hosting platform to the reentry vehicle, and returning it to Earth.
- Under a new space act agreement, In Orbit is partnering with Nanoracks to demonstrate autonomous docking and robotic transfer in a zero-gravity environment. Nanoracks, now owned by Voyager Space, is a long-time commercial resident of the ISS and frequently provides support to newer entrants looking to take advantage of the ISS National Lab. In Orbit’s testing will take place mid- to late-2025 at the earliest, Elliott said.
- On a slightly longer scale, In Orbit is aiming to launch a second mission in 2026 and then partner with a spacecraft provider to host a manufacturing lab on orbit. The eventual goal is to leave hardware in space, and just launch the reentry capsules that would rendezvous and dock with the platforms on orbit.
- In Orbit is expecting that its core customers will be manufacturers, which will want to outsource on orbit hosting. Those customers would be the ones to work with, say, pharmaceutical or semiconductor firms looking to manufacture products in space.
- As an extension to this, it is also developing the Resource Exchange Module (REX), which can serve as a removable payload bay from their Retriever or maintain pressurized environments on permanent space-based platforms.
- The REX also enables the sorting and transfer of payloads between two docked spacecraft, enhancing automation and throughput.
- In-Orbit has partnered with Nanoracks and Voyager Space to demonstrate the REX's operations on the International Space Station in 2025.