Orbit Fab hires new CEO and raises funding to support satellite refueling business
TOKYO - With a new chief executive and funding round, satellite refueling company Orbit Fab hopes to make the transition from technology development to operations.
The Colorado-based company announced July 7 that it hired Peter Shaper as its chief executive. Shaper has worked in private equity for three decades in roles that included serving as chief executive of satellite services companies CapRock Communications and Speedcast.
Shaper said in an interview that he was brought in by the company's lead investor, Stride Capital, earlier this year as a member of the board when the company's founding chief executive, Daniel Faber, announced he would step down. "As I learned more and more about the business, I got more excited about it and ended up starting what was going to be a board engagement into becoming the CEO," he said.
What excited him was the prospect of taking the satellite refueling technology the company had developed and building it into a sustainable business. "The team has done the hard work. They have developed the technology," he said. "The investor decided they would like me to come in and really commercialize things - go win contracts and become a commercial business - instead of just continuing to develop technology."
Orbit Fab is best known in the industry for RAFTI, a docking and refueling interface designed to allow spacecraft to be refueled in orbit. The company has three demonstration missions in development, scheduled to fly in the next 18 to 24 months, to show it can use that technology to refuel government satellites.
Those demo missions, Shaper said, will help the company bridge the gap from technology development to operations, unlocking a backlog of more than $40 million in contracts for on-orbit refueling services. "These demonstrations bring it all together and deliver the first fuel for space. There's pent-up customer demand waiting to see these demonstrations work effectively," he said.
Those demo missions are similar in that they involve using a fuel "shuttle" the company has developed to provide hydrazine to a government satellite. "We have three shots on goal to make sure we can make everything work entirely properly and build the confidence that this is commercial and it's ready for business," he said.
At the same time, the company is working on how to turn that technical ability to refuel satellites into a business. That includes, he said, building out the overall concept of operations of the refueling service, such as timelines and pricing. He argued that had been largely overlooked at the company before he joined as it worked on the technology.
To support that work, the company also announced July 7 it raised more than $25 million in interim funding from Stride Capital. Don Rogers, founder and managing partner of Stride Capital, is joining the Orbit Fab board along with Roger Teague, a former U.S. Air Force major general who has worked in the space industry after retirement.
The interim funding will support Orbit Fab through late this year as it works to raise a Series B round. Shaper said the company is looking to raise between $30 million and $50 million in that Series B round that would take the company through at least two of its planned demo missions in 2027 and its first commercial contracts.
Orbit Fab sees the U.S. military as the biggest initial customer for refueling services. This is despite some mixed signals from top Space Force officials about the military utility of on-orbit refueling.
"We're seeing increasing clear demand that refueling is an absolute requirement," Shaper said. "What we're hearing about those who are not as much on board with refueling is that it's less a disagreement with refueling and it's more an argument about priorities for where dollars go today."
Orbit Fab has an office in the United Kingdom, and he said the demand in the U.K. and Europe for satellite refueling is about 12 to 18 months behind the United States. He added that commercial satellite operators are also showing an interest in refueling, "but they won't get there as fast as first the U.S. government, and then other governments."
He said the goal is to ensure Orbit Fab is ready to meet that demand as it emerges. "We're no longer just a development shop. Now we're moving to real commercialization and building a big business."
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