SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) ("Momentus" or the "Company"), a U.S. commercial space company that offers transportation and other in-space infrastructure services, today announced that its Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV) arrived at Vandenberg Space Force Base for its third demonstration mission targeted to launch on the SpaceX Transporter-7 mission next month.
The Momentus team completed final flight preparations, and the Vigoride-6 OSV is integrated with the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The priorities of this mission include delivering payloads for NASA, as well as the REVELA payload for ARCA Dynamics, the VIREO CubeSat for C3S LLC., the DISCO-1 CubeSat for Aarhus University, and the IRIS-C payload for an Asian customer booked through ISILAUNCH.
"Vigoride-6 will mark our third OSV mission. Spaceflight heritage is an important competitive discriminator as customers seek reliability and flexibility," said Momentus Chief Executive Officer John Rood. "We're honored to serve NASA on this flight as we deliver two payloads for their NASA LLITED mission to a custom orbit and provide orbital transportation services for several commercial customers."
In addition to customer payload deployments, the Vigoride-6 mission will focus on continued testing of the OSV in space, including the Microwave Electrothermal Thruster (MET) that is designed to use water as a propellant and produce thrust by expelling extremely hot gases through a rocket nozzle. Vigoride-6 will also carry a Momentus payload called the Tape Spring Solar Array (TASSA) technology. TASSA features large sheets of flexible solar cells bonded to tape springs. To stow, they are tightly coiled around a mandrel. After launch, motors unroll the mandrel, deploying the solar array. TASSA can coil around a 4" diameter mandrel, compared to the 12" ones used for other rollout solar arrays.
"Momentus has applied to patent the principles behind TASSA," said Rood. "Once TASSA development is complete, we anticipate that the technology could reduce the overall recurring production cost of a Vigoride while reducing lead time by several months. These are important improvements as we continue to transition from Vigoride development to production at lower unit costs. We are also seeing commercial and government customers interested in TASSA."
Momentus launched its inaugural mission in May 2022. That mission deployed eight customer payloads from the Vigoride-3 vehicle and a third-party deployer. Vigoride-5, the Company's second demonstration mission, launched in January 2023. Read the latest mission update from Vigoride-5 here.
About Momentus
Momentus is a U.S. commercial space company that offers in-space infrastructure services, including in-space transportation, hosted payloads and in-orbit services. Momentus believes it can make new ways of operating in space possible with its planned in-space transfer and service vehicles that will be powered by an innovative water plasma-based propulsion system that is under development.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains certain statements which may constitute “forward-looking statements” for purposes of the federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the aggregate value of Common Shares which may be issued pursuant to the ATM Program and Momentus’ expected use of the net proceeds from the ATM Program, if any. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of Momentus’ control. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to risks and uncertainties included under the heading “Risk Factors” in the Annual Report on Form 10-K filed by the Company on March 9, 2022, as such factors may be updated from time to time in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), accessible on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov and the Investor Relations section of our website at investors.momentus.space. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and, except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.