Investing in Space: Beyond the battlefield

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AeroVironment posted blowout quarterly results and raised its top-line guidance for the full fiscal year. Revenue surged, and the company's order backlog expanded to set a new record. The reason? Soaring demand for its unmanned and autonomous systems, many of which have been battle tested in Ukraine.

"Eight of our different robots or drones and robotic systems are in use in Ukraine," Wahid Nawabi, AeroVironment's CEO, told me. "It basically has become an inflection point, in terms of the use of small distributed drones and loitering munitions, kamikaze drones such as the Switchblade, in terms of what it could do for warfare."

If the future of warfare is unmanned, AeroVironment is positioned to capitalize on it. But Nawabi is quick to point out the contractor is fundamentally a technology company specializing in autonomy, and those capabilities extend beyond and above the battlefield. 

"Defense happens to be our largest customer and market that we serve, but we make systems that go beyond in terms of applications, to more product lines or capabilities have very direct implications to space," Nawabi said on CNBC's "Manifest Space" podcast.

Indeed, the Simi Valley, Calif.-based company has a history in space. It's best known perhaps for the design and development of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ingenuity made history in 2021, when it became the first aircraft ever to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet. 

At first, officials and engineers hoped Ingenuity would fly as many as five times from the red planet's surface, given the difficult flight conditions. Mars has a thin atmosphere, about 1/100th of Earth's, Nawabi said. 

Recently, however, Ingenuity conducted its 57th flight, surpassing 100 minutes of total Mars flight time.

"Fundamentally, this is the beginning of a space robotics business for us," said Nawabi. "Now that we can fly on Mars, there's lots and lots of different missions." Flight capability could go a long way in the colonization of Mars, for instance.

NASA in May awarded the company a contract to co-design and develop two helicopters for a Mars Sample Recovery mission. The initial contract is just $10 million, but it is also in the early stages. As of now, NASA is targeting a 2028 launch date. 

AeroVironment has also partnered with Softbank on building high-altitude pseudo satellites, or HAPS, for the stratosphere. (The joint venture is named, well, HAPSMobile.) Think of them as solar-powered airplanes with a wingspan slightly longer than an Airbus A380, but weighing as little as an SUV, which take off from a runway and climb to roughly 65,000 feet above sea level – about two to three times higher than a commercial aircraft.

The plan: Use these unmanned aircraft to operate a broadband constellation to provide connectivity, competing with terrestrial cell towers and the growing number of satellites offering communications services.

AeroVironment first demonstrated the stratospheric flight capability two years ago. Now the JV is building a final configuration that will then need to be certified by the FAA – potentially a tall order since nothing like this has been put in front of or signed off on by regulators before. So, the timeline has yet to be determined. 

The aircraft's utility won't be limited to commercial activities, either, according to Nawabi. 

"There's also a whole bunch of defense applications for this job, as you can imagine areas of the world where we want to have persistent overwatch, or communications, for the battlefield." 

The lessons learned from this endeavor will also apparently bolster the emerging space robotics business. So while the missions will be unmanned, they're not unconnected from bigger goals.

• NASA's Psyche asteroid mission could lift off next month, according to an agency briefing Wednesday. Project officials say, after more than a year of delays, that preparations are on track for the launch of the Psyche mission to an eponymous metal-rich asteroid as soon as Oct. 5. The launch, which a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket would carry out, faces a potential hurdle, though, as a potential government shutdown looms in Washington. – NASA, SpaceNews
• NASA's Crew-6 splashed down, completing a six-month stint at the International Space Station — and the final mission of SpaceX's original Commercial Crew contract with the agency.  Delayed slightly by bad weather on the Cape, the Crew Dragon capsule Endeavor carried two NASA astronauts, one UAE astronaut and a cosmonaut back home to earth, landing off the Florida coast. – NASA
• SpaceX sets a new industry record, with its 62nd orbital launch this calendar year. The Sunday mission, which carried 21 Starlink satellites, surpasses the orbital launch record of 61 set by SpaceX last year, as the company now averages a launch every four days.  In a post on his social media platform, X, Elon Musk said SpaceX is "Aiming for 10 Falcon flights in a month by end of this year, then 12 per month next year." – SpaceFlight Now, X
• And speaking of Musk, the SpaceX founder and chief executive reportedly tapped his space company for a $1 billion loan right around the time he was buying the social-media company now formerly known as Twitter for $44 billion. In financial documents seen by The Wall Street Journal, he paid the reported loan back with interest in November. – WSJ
• Japan enters the moon race with the successful launch of its SLIM spacecraft, as well as the XRISM telescope to study hot spots in the universe. A Japanese Japanese H-IIA rocket carried both payloads to space. JAXA plans to use the SLIM robotic moon lander to test capabilities that would be used in bigger future lunar landings. – NYT
• China's Galactic Energy conducted its first sea launch, when its Ceres-1 solid rocket lifted off from a mobile sea platform off the coast of Haiyang, Shandong province. The "Little Mermaid" mission marked the ninth successful launch for the commercial company. – SpaceNews
• India sets sights on the sun, launching its Aditya-L1 mission to study the star and space weather. It's the latest space milestone for the country, on the heels of the historic Chandrayaan-3 mission in which india's moon rover became the first to reach the lunar south pole. Speaking of, the ISRO said it put its lunar craft "into Sleep mode" last weekend. – Nature, Reuters
• UFO, er, UAP intrigue continues, with the Pentagon launching a dedicated website, detailing all things related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. Coming on the heels of a high-profile House hearing, the new website will provide information, including images and videos, and allow troops and civilian personnel – and eventually perhaps even the public -- to report information relating to UAP as far back as 1945. – The National, All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office

• ESA aims to set a launch window for the maiden Ariane 6 flight in coming weeks, hoping it can happen "not too late" into 2024. The plan as of now is to be able to announce a range of dates following a pair of static fire tests. – Space News, ESA
• Anduril Systems makes another acquisition, buying autonomous aircraft developer Blue Force Technologies for an undisclosed price. The purchase follows the startup's expansion into the missile market with solid rocket motor maker, Adranos, in June, and the launch of an AI-enabled software platform to connect autonomous systems earlier this year. – Defense One
• SpaceX launched 13 SDA Tranche 0 satellites for the U.S. Space Development Agency. The Transport and Tracking Layer satellites "that will demonstrate low-latency tactical data links to deliver space-based capabilities to the warfighter, including tracking of advanced missile threats, through a resilient constellation in low-Earth orbit." It's the second launch for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation. – SDA, CNBC
• An Amazon shareholder alleges the tech giant snubbed SpaceX for valuable satellite launch contracts because of founder Jeff Bezos' personal rivalry with Musk. The Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, or CB&T, filed the shareholder complaint recently. Amazon says "the claims in this lawsuit are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal process." – CNBC
• MDA Snaps up SatixFy's Payload Division For $60 million, in a deal that includes $40 million for SatixFy Space Systems, plus a $20 million in advanced payments by MDA to utilize SatixFy's flagship chipsets in satellites and ground systems. – Payload Space

• Intuitive Machines raises $20 million in equity, according to an SEC filing, selling roughly 4.7 million shares to an unnamed institutional investor. CEO Steve Altemus said it will help "ensure smooth transition and provide the working capital needed to execute for our customer on day 1," adding the publicly traded space startup expects to launch its first lunar lander, IM-1, mid-November with two more on track for next year. All three will carry payloads for NASA ("our customer") under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLIPS) program – Intuitive Machines
• Terran Orbital unveiled an initiative to speed up satellite production, planning in 2024 to deliver hardware in 30 to 60 days. The manufacturer also released a new line of seven satellite buses. – Terran Orbital