Laser Satellite Communications Startup Secures $90 Million Financing

Observable Space was formed in 2025 by the merger of two companies focused on space tracking software and optical telescopes, with headquarters located in Adrian, Michigan. This round of funding was led by Lux Capital, with co-leaders including Upfront Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Island Green Capital, and RTX Ventures, and followed by BRV Capital and Fathom Fund.

The company also announced a $94 million contract with the U.S. Space Force to expand the ground-based optical telescope network to provide satellite tracking services for the Pentagon. Chief Executive Officer Dan Roelker summarized the company's positioning with a single sentence: "The next space race is on the ground."

The core technology that Observable Space is betting on is laser communication, which transmits data between satellites and the ground through pulsed lasers. Compared to existing radio frequency spectrum solutions, laser communication offers transmission speeds that are 10 to 100 times faster, while avoiding issues such as limited spectrum resources and security vulnerabilities. Roelker believes that this technology is also highly significant for the emerging orbital AI data centers. One of the motivations for SpaceX's IPO this summer was to raise capital for as many as a million satellites performing complex computational tasks.

The main technical challenge for laser communication lies in interference from cloud cover and the high requirement for the precise pointing and tracking capability of telescopes. Observable Space's solution is to deploy a large-scale ground-based optical telescope network and provide tracking software to accurately locate the positions of spacecraft, which is also the core requirement of the Space Force contract.

The company has proven the technical feasibility in real operations. In the recent Artemis II mission, Observable Space successfully completed a laser communication demonstration between a ground telescope and NASA's Orion spacecraft, which carried four astronauts on a lunar flight. Additionally, the company has a contract with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to jointly build a private ground observatory with 1200 small telescopes at the University of North Carolina.

The new round of funding will mainly be used to expand the talent team and manufacturing capacity in Michigan.