Slingshot Aerospace, a company focused on the future of space sustainability, raised $25 million in its latest Series A funding round. The company's projects will allow commercial, government, and civil satellite operators to share traffic information. Slingshot Aerospace's co-founder and CEO Melanie Stricklan joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to talk about the up-and-coming company.

Closing Bell

Slingshot Aerospace Raises $25 Million to Improve Space Sustainability

a company that helps satellite operators navigate. Space traffic. Slingshot Aerospace raising $25 million in part two of its series. A round funding funding around that is, Slingshot says it will use the funding to accelerate the commercialization of its products. Slingshot beacon. The company describes it as a space collision avoidance platform that allows commercial government and civil satellite operators to share space traffic info. The company's other product is called Slingshot Laboratory and offers space education and training and joining us now to talk all things Slingshot is Melanie Strickland co founder and ceo of the company, Melanie happy friday. Welcome to the show and congratulations. So before we get like what, before we get into the details here of the company, could you help me better understand what, what is space traffic, what are we talking about? Yeah, thanks for having me. Uh, space traffic are the satellites, spacecraft, um, and, and sometimes the defunct and debris objects that are on orbit. A lot of these are going 17,500 miles an hour just in and flying around the earth. And so there it is not a juristic did domain And so as traffic continues to proliferate at exponential rates, it's just really important that there's a coordination collaboration platform to help map, log track and coordinate space traffic um, with the digital infrastructure that that's capable of doing so and Melanie, there's no shortage of, of these items that constitute space traffic. I know it's tough for those of us here on terra firma to look up and and to have a perspective on it, but there's a lot of this stuff flying around and it's flying around very quickly. Tell us more about slingshot specifically and what really the company's goals are. Yeah, thanks for asking. Um, our goals are to be the nervous system uh, for the future uh autonomous uh space domain. So that's a big hairy, audacious goal. But today what we're doing is we are reducing the nuisance voice that's out there. Um, the systems that um have been the de facto traffic cop of yesteryear are still in place today and we give Uh, you know, the 18th Space Control Squadron up at Vandenberg Air Force Base. We applaud them but we've got to be able to scale with the current growth of the space industry. There's 87 countries and 10,000 companies across the globe launching and operating spacecraft. And the vast majority of space investment is still going into more hardware, more rockets, more satellites, more ground components and less on the digital infrastructure. And that's where slingshot comes to complement and to help both the industry, the government, both on the D. O. D. And the the civil side across the globe, you know, Whenever I retired from the air force were tracking about 1800 objects on orbit. You mentioned there's a lot on orbit. There's a lot more than that today. Even in the last year we've doubled the number of satellites that are operational on orbit and it's a great time to have the second space revolution. But we've got to get a hold of the tracking component of this and fly with our eyes wide open going into the next generation of, of, of the space industry. I'd like to clarify, did you say? Did we double the number of satellites in the last year? We did. How many satellites are we talking about? I remember having this debate um, I had a camping trip up to northern Minnesota 11 summer and you can actually look up and see them because this guy is that clear and this led to a huge debate about how many satellites we actually have, how many satellites are up there. I have no idea. Yeah. So um, we checked our software this morning and uh, you know, different people tracked different uh, different ways. But we are tracking around 7500 satellites on orbit today, 7500, Wow, I don't have any idea. Yeah, go ahead. By 2030 we're looking at about 100 and 15,000 satellites on orbit. So by the end of the decade. Right. And, and so in 2017, like I said, when we're retired, we were tracking about 1800 so um, you know, this is due to transparent pricing reusable rockets, those types of things have broken that ceiling and allowed for, you know, the micro um, components in our, in our handheld devices are now leveraged on, on smaller satellites more resilient architectures are in place. So thousands of satellites and constellation versus you know, tens and it's amazing because I I bring up the camping trip because it's the only time I ever had perspective on it is the one time in life you could look up and quite literally see what's flying overhead because the night that but no none of us ever have a clear night sky like that usually where we live to have that perspective. Okay, while I have you, let's talk slingshot beacon um what's important for people to know their that's a fascinating conversation. Yeah, I think um the the the thing that I would like everyone to understand is that today space owners and operators of the spacecraft are inundated with risk events um and messages um that that just turned into noise. These are collision data messages. Um and so what slingshot beacon is here to do is to minimize that noise for our owner operators and our clients just to focus on the ones that are most concerning. Um and then to be able to coordinate and collaborate across the globe across, you know, silos that had had been there for years. Um so now they're communicating across competitive landscapes on the commercial side, they're communicating from commercial to government and and government being D. O. D. And the civil side of the house and so we're really excited to break those silos down and give, you know a path for space sustainability Melanie, I have less than 30 seconds, but you're confident that even by the end of the decade, with more than 100,000 of these things just flying around at 17,000 plus mph, that you will be able to track them and prevent them from collisions. Absolutely, with the homogenized data infrastructure. Absolutely, we are on that path. Um you're a rock star. I've loved this conversation, thank you by the way for your service to our country in the form of the Air Force, which I heard you mention a few responses ago and for the service you're doing now because it sounds like it's incredibly important and will continue to be so more between now and the end of the decade, Melanie Strickland is co founder and Ceo of the company itself, Melanie great privilege to have you happy friday, enjoy your weekend.