KMI will execute on an ambitious 2 year STRATFI mission, successfully relocating two separate noncooperative satellites from their current orbits to 350 km decaying orbits
Satellites are big, and Space is bigger. Moving these big, massive assets across even larger distances in orbit is a steep challenge. Kall Morris is focused on helping their clients bridge that gap, having earned a STRATFI award for an undisclosed batch of nondilutive federal funding matching a similarly undisclosed batch of private capital at roughly a 2:1 ratio. This is a huge win for Michigan’s proudest satellite-wrestling company, and represents both a vote of confidence in their capabilities and product offerings and a funded opportunity to achieve TRL 9 on both their vehicle and interfacing arm, respectively Laelaps and REACCH.
KMI describes themselves as Tow Trucks in space, but the implications of their product offerings exceed that description. KMI’s CONOPS implications are extensive. Because their REACHH arm is so gentile and nondestructive, they’re able to engage with live assets that still have some figurative gas left in the tank. For example, should a satellite be fully functional but simply have run out of station-keeping propulsion, KMI is able to engage with the asset and utilize their own platform’s propulsion to serve as a makeshift extension, meaning that they can keep the mission alive for longer. Should the client’s payload be perfectly functional, but their ADCS system be faltering, KMI would be able to engage with the asset and ensure that they’re pointing in the right direction, leveraging their own onboard ADCS to normalize and stabilize things. If the asset or satellite isn’t drawing power because it’s turned around or facing the wrong way, KMI would be able to put the solar cells in sunshine and allow for the previously lost satellite to commission and start back up.
It’s an extensive product and service offering set that has a bevy of implications for both commercial and defense use cases. The award will fund a demonstration mission proving out the full suite of their capabilities over the next several years. Using the same analog to cars and vehicles, KMI initially focused on defense customers throughout the space by allowing them to de-orbit dead assets or debris and cleaning up orbits for new assets to launch and go up. “We initially started with a focus on preventing the tragedy of the commons: a solution that could remove debris and abandoned vehicles from an orbit of interest… What we found was that customers were more interested in keeping their assets alive than they were in removing other people’s dead assets. Folks wanted an Ambulance, not a Hearse.” – Troy Morris, Co-Founder and CEO. To that end, Kall Morris has effectively focused on their customer’s needs and addressing the AAA sized gap for orbital assets.
KMI’s flagship asset is the Laelaps vehicle whose namesake was the Greek mythological dog who would always catch its prey. The vehicle is built in partnership with many different hardware providers and specialists, allowing KMI to focus explicitly on the REACCH interfacing arm, which is capable of engaging non-destructively with any asset once Laelaps’ computer vision and RPO capabilities identify the optimal docking point. “Kall Morris is working with government partners, both civil agencies and national security to align and have a customer in place as well as an end user to be able to go and do a demonstration, bringing down two assets for deorbit.” -Cameron Penny, Head of Business Partnerships. This full functionality STRATFI mission, when executed, will involve Laelaps tracking, targeting, engaging, and relocating two separate satellites. The two target satellites will be at altitudes of roughly ~600 km and will be brought to decaying orbits of ~350 km. Each satellite’s execution will involve a roughly 1-2 month tracking, approach, and engagement window followed by a slightly less than 1 year towing window, setting up the entire mission to take roughly 2 years from start to finish. The unit economics on KMI’s mission types vary sizably from mission to mission, as the capabilities of each Laelaps vehicle are largely influenced by the mass of the vehicle with which they are grappling. That being said, with noted exceptions, the Laelaps vehicle is designed a 3-4 mission lifespan, and is capable of providing full and complete coverage of LEO with a fleet of as few as 13 assets on orbit. While Scale is a ways off, KMI takes pride in being in the heart of the Automotive industry and is prepared to build the REACCH components for their vehicles to meet the demand of the market as their demonstration mission achieves TRL 9.
The longer term implications of KMI’s growing success are far reaching: a space industry in which capital investment has a non-zero recovery value, and the effective barrier to entry for capital requirements lowers further, allowing for more unique mission types and a wider variety of players and services to enter the ecosystem. Their product offerings combine the technical challenges of Remote Proximity Operations, Space Domain Awareness, and the logistics and CONOPS challenges of true on-orbit servicing as a business model. While their STRATFI demo mission will focus on the pure de-orbit use case for their product suite, KMI has already received demand and interest in the product offerings from both commercial and federal customers, looking for solutions to extend the life of currently operational assets including the end-of-life disposal of assets that are nearing the end of their design life but want to squeeze every last drop of value they can out of their multi million dollar investments. Kall Morris is growing rapidly and looking for both customers and talent to join their team. As the mission grows, so too must the team servicing it! For anyone interested in joining said mission, and anyone interested in the product offerings KMI boasts, reach out to the team!
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