Established in 2023 by Milton Perque formerly of Echodyne and Adam Bily formerly with Apple and Astranis the company is pioneering an electronically-steered antenna radar array that leverages cutting edge metasurface technology. This innovative approach to beam steering promises enhanced capability scalability and cost efficiency compared to traditional AESA systems.
The startup plans to enable two critical satellite functions from Low Earth Orbit by providing continuous geospatial imagery for Earth Observation alongside dynamic ground target tracking to bolster defense missions. These dual capabilities aim to address significant gaps in both commercial and military applications.
By employing Synthetic Aperture Radar Kapta Space produces high-resolution "around-the-clock" imagery and analytics from space to supply commercial industries with persistent actionable information that remains largely unavailable through conventional means.
Kapta Space contends that current technologies leave blind spots in commercial SAR imagery data and analytics. While other providers focus on high-resolution satellite imagery to meet DoD and intelligence demands Kapta takes a different stance.
"SAR isn't just about capturing satellite images. Our system allows us to deliver a more diverse set of data products to serve the broader commercial market. Although our system can provide small, high-resolution images, we can also deliver many other imaging products and modalities that today's technologies simply are not capable of," says Kapta Space CTO and co-founder Adam Bily.
The system further supports InSAR a technique crucial for monitoring earth displacement and generating detailed 3D deformation maps with centimeter-scale sensitivity. This data is vital for industries such as large-scale mining and infrastructure monitoring. "With a modest constellation of around 10 satellites, we could provide rapid-revisit, practical 3D infrastructure monitoring of key locations all around the world," says Bily.
CEO and co-founder Milton Perque emphasizes that the technology extends well beyond persistent Earth Observation.
"Our tech has much broader implications than just SAR," says Perque. "What we see is more of an advanced, multi-mission Spaceborne radar sensor that would enable many of the critical defense missions that don't exist at scale, like GMTI (or Ground Moving Target Indication; missions of tracking slow moving ground targets from space). That's not possible with a low-cost, mechanically pointed system. To enable these critical missions, radar sensors are required to be sophisticated, yet cost-efficient. This is incredibly challenging, and it has never existed in space at scale."
Historical efforts by the Department of Defense to transition airborne missions into space dating back 25 years underscore the strategic need for global persistent access in conflict zones such as Ukraine. Reinforcing its defense potential Kapta Space secured a 1.8 million Direct to Phase II SBIR in Q2 2023 and obtained the security clearances needed for classified contracts.
"AESAs are plagued with several problems that generally make them impractical for spaceborne applications at scale," said Chris Alliegro, managing partner MetaVC Partners a metamaterials-focused VC firm.
"That's where metamaterials come in. The Kapta team has designed a metamaterials-based radar imaging device that offers improved electronic scanning at lesser cost, complexity, and power consumption than spaceborne AESA's. And we are incredibly lucky to have Milton and Adam at the wheel, two early pioneers in the development of metamaterials-based systems." The company plans to pursue additional non-dilutive funding opportunities throughout the year.
Related Links
Kapta Space
Military Space News at SpaceWar.com
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