Founded in 2022, K2 Space is building satellites sized for vehicles such as Falcon 9, Starship and New Glenn, arguing that these rockets enable a new class of spacecraft that are larger, higher power and designed to operate in low, medium and geostationary Earth orbits rather than a single orbital regime. Company leaders state that such multi orbit, high power platforms will be needed as communications and compute workloads move from terrestrial networks into space.
"Space is becoming one of the most strategically important technology sectors, and it's attracting investment because the underlying demand is real and accelerating," said Elliot Geidt, Partner at Redpoint. "What stands out about K2 is how much core hardware they've built themselves. They're not assembling a satellite; they're redefining the architecture needed for the next decade of missions."
"K2 is tackling one of the biggest limitations in the space economy: meaningful increases in power and scale," said T. Rowe Price investment analyst Jason Leblang. "Their approach isn't incremental. They're rethinking satellite design from the ground up, and the result is a platform that can support entirely new classes of missions. That's why we're confident in the team and the trajectory."
In its first two years K2 Space focused on subsystems that it viewed as missing from the commercial supply chain for large high power resilient spacecraft. The engineering program produced what the company describes as the highest power hall effect thruster flown to date, at roughly four times the power of earlier systems, along with large solar arrays for maximum power generation, a radiation tolerant avionics suite for high radiation environments, large reaction wheels and high voltage power systems.
These designs have been tested in orbit. Earlier in 2025 K2 Space flew a hosted payload mission that exercised the flight computer, reaction wheel and avionics stack in space, providing on orbit validation of the core platform ahead of integrating a complete spacecraft.
"Each subsystem had to be built to a new performance class," said Neel Kunjur, Co-Founder and CTO. "That engineering forms the basis of our high-power 'Mega' line, and it's why we can take customers beyond the limits of the small-satellite era."
The company's first Mega Class satellite, GRAVITAS, is slated to launch in March 2026 as K2's initial production example of the Mega line. Although smaller than the follow on spacecraft the company is designing, GRAVITAS is described as comparable in scale to the largest satellites built so far and is designed to fly on rockets including Falcon 9, Vulcan and Ariane 6 while delivering about ten times the power of other satellites in its class.
Mega is built from the outset for multi orbit operations and is hardened for harsh radiation environments, using redundancy and reliability techniques similar to those historically applied to human rated vehicles such as Dragon and the Space Shuttle. The GRAVITAS mission will mark the first spaceflight of K2's fully integrated in house system and will support a broad test campaign of the platform and subsystems.
Planned milestones include the first in space firing of a 20 kilowatt hall effect thruster, which K2 says is roughly four times more powerful than any such thruster flown so far, the first deployment of twin 10 kilowatt solar arrays totaling 20 kilowatts on the platform, and the first on orbit operation of the company's high voltage power system working with its radiation tolerant avionics.
"GRAVITAS brings our full stack together for the first time," said Karan Kunjur, Co-Founder and CEO. "We are validating the architecture in space, from high-voltage power and large solar arrays to our guidance and control algorithms, and a 20 kW Hall thruster, and we will scale based on measured performance."
"We pushed our propulsion hard on the ground and were thrilled to hot-fire at the full 20 kW," added Rafael Martinez, who leads K2's high-power electric propulsion program. "Now we're eager to characterize the thruster's performance in space."
Following the Mega launch, K2 Space plans to ramp manufacturing at its 180,000 square foot factory in Torrance California, which is sized to produce about 100 high power satellites per year. That production capacity is intended to support fulfillment of 500 million dollars in commercial and government contracts, including work with SES on a future medium Earth orbit network, and multiple launches are scheduled across 2026 and 2027 with commercial and national security constellations expected to begin operations from 2028.
"K2 is bringing something brand new to the space industrial base: low cost, high power satellites produced at speed and scale," said Dr. John Plumb, Head of Strategy at K2. "Our innovative approach will enable entire satellite constellations of exquisite payloads - something unimaginable due to its prohibitive cost before K2 showed up."
Beyond Mega, K2 Space is preparing Giga, a larger spacecraft line designed specifically for super heavy lift vehicles such as Starship and New Glenn. Giga is planned to deliver 100 kilowatts of power per satellite to support applications including large scale AI compute in orbit, high throughput networks spanning orbits and planetary distances, and mass produced large telescopes aimed at expanding scientific return from the solar system and beyond.
"Our north star is simple," said Karan Kunjur. "If we build these platforms well, we get to ask new questions about what's possible in orbit."
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