Kinetic launch SpinLaunchyes, the centrifuge rocket companyis making a hard pivot to satellites "Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center." Eric Berger Apr 4, 2025 9:59 am | 18 A rendering of a stack of Meridian satellites. Credit: SpinLaunch A rendering of a stack of Meridian satellites. Credit: SpinLaunch Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreOutside of several mentions in the Rocket Report newsletter dating back to 2018, Ars Technica has not devoted too much attention to covering a novel California space company named SpinLaunch.That's because the premise is so outlandish as to almost not feel real. The company aims to build a kinetic launch system that spins a rocket around at speeds up to 4,700 mph (7,500 km/h) before sending it upward toward space. Then, at an altitude of 40 miles (60 km) or so, the rocket would ignite its engines to achieve orbital velocity. Essentially, SpinLaunch wants to yeet things into space.But the company was no joke. After being founded in 2014, it raised more than $150 million over the next decade. It built a prototype accelerator in New Mexico and performed a series of flight tests. The flights reached altitudes of "tens of thousands" of feet, according to the company, and were often accompanied by slickly produced videos.SpinLaunch goes quietFollowing this series of tests, by the end of 2022, the company went mostly quiet. It was not clear whether it ran out of funding, had hit some technical problems in trying to build a larger accelerator, or what. Somewhat ominously, SpinLaunchs founder and chief executive, Jonathan Yaney, was replaced without explanation last May. The new leader would be David Wrenn, then serving as chief operating officer."I am confident in our ability to execute on the companys mission and bring our integrated tech stack of low-cost space solutions to market," Wrenn said at the time. "I look forward to sharing more details about our near- and long-term strategy in the coming months."Words like "tech stack" and "low-cost space solutions" sounded like nebulous corporate speak, and it was not clear what they meant. Nor did Wrenn immediately deliver on that promise, nearly a year ago, to share more details about the company's near- and long-term strategy.Breaking their silenceWrenn and SpinLaunch finally broke their silence this week, and it definitely left some heads spinning. The company made several announcements on Thursday:It plans to build a low-Earth orbit telecommunications constellation, Meridian, with 280 satellitesIt signed a $135 million contract with Europe-based NanoAvionics as a key supplier for this constellationKongsberg Defence & Aerospace will invest $12 million in the Meridian constellationMeridian will be launched on one or two "traditional" rocketsThe company remains committed to kinetic launch, announcing a study of Adak Island, Alaska as a site of a "cutting-edge" launch facilityKinetic launch will, over time, be used to replenish and maintain this constellationIt was a lot to take in at once. But the key point here is that for a decade, the company appeared to be focused on a (potentially) revolutionary method of accelerating rockets into space using a centrifuge but was now pivoting to building a mega-constellation. And initially, at least, this constellation would be launched using plain old chemical rockets.That's a hard pivot. Ars spoke with Wrenn on Thursday afternoon to better understand what is happening here."The launch market is relatively small compared to the economic potential of satellite communication," Wrenn said. "Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center. Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry."He said SpinLaunch began thinking about satellites about five years ago as it developed its launch system, which puts far higher gravitational loads on payloadsliterally thousands of G'sas they spin in the centrifuge."It was quite natural for us," Wrenn said. "We were thinking about how you build satellites for SpinLaunchand how you could deploy and maintain satellites with SpinLaunch. How do you build very high-performing satellites and small form factors?"Can this actually work?The launch market has changed substantially over the last decade. Whereas launch was rare and expensive at the time, thanks largely to the Falcon 9 rocket and SpaceX, it is increasingly ubiquitous. The number of orbital launches, globally, has roughly tripled. A generation of new medium-lift launch vehicles with elements of reuse is coming online. And the small launch business has proven to be economically challenging. It likely would cost SpinLaunch hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, to develop a full-scale accelerator for orbital launches, and then you need specially built rockets. From the outside, that seems like a difficult business case to close.So the company is diversifying. But can a constellation like Meridian work? Wrenn said the initial plan is to deploy about 250 satellites, each with a mass of 150 pounds (70 kg). The goal is to limit power usage and use modern, miniaturized technology such as "ultra-efficient reflectarray antennas" to pack a lot of capability into a small satellite. More details can be found here.Basically, the company is seeking to launch a constellation with roughly the same data capacity, about 2 "sellable" terabits, as the OneWeb constellation now operated by Eutelsat. But instead of doing this with larger satellites and 20 launches as OneWeb did, Wrenn said the company's constellation of smaller satellites could be lofted by a single large rocket or perhaps two medium-lift rockets.The goal is to fly a demonstration mission in 2026, launch its first commercial satellites no earlier than late 2027, and then begin selling communications services after that, primarily to enterprise (businesses and possibly governments).It seems like a big ask to deliver the same global communications constellation as OneWeb with an order of magnitude fewer launches. But at the same time, the technology in the OneWeb satellites is more than a decade old. There have been a lot of advances made since then.Time will tell whether the new announcement is spin or not.Eric BergerSenior Space EditorEric BergerSenior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 18 Comments