Spaceflight Industries

Spaceflight Inc. (formerly Spaceflight Industries), headquartered in Seattle, Washington and founded in 2011, is a U.S. rideshare launch services provider and satellite mission management company that aggregates manifests for small satellite launches — purchasing blocks of mass capacity on orbital launch vehicles (primarily SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter rideshare missions, Rocket Lab Electron, and other vehicles) and reselling that capacity to satellite operators as individual manifested slots, handling all mission integration, documentation, regulatory compliance, and launch coordination complexity on the operator's behalf.

Spaceflight's core value proposition is democratizing launch access for small satellite operators: instead of negotiating directly with SpaceX, managing FAA launch license applications, obtaining FCC frequency licenses, coordinating ITAR technical data exports, and managing payload processing schedules, a satellite developer can purchase a 'slot' from Spaceflight and hand off most of this complexity to Spaceflight's experienced launch services team.

This intermediary role is particularly valuable for university cubesat programs, startup satellite companies launching their first satellite, and international operators who lack the regulatory relationships and technical expertise to navigate U.S. launch regulations independently.

Spaceflight has coordinated hundreds of satellite launches across missions including the SSO-A SmallSat Express mission in 2018 — a landmark Falcon 9 dedicated rideshare mission carrying 64 satellites, at the time the largest number of commercial satellites deployed from a single U.S. launch — which demonstrated the viability of cost-effective rideshare as a primary launch modality for the commercial smallsat industry. The company provides integration services, satellite dispensers (including the Sherpa orbital transfer vehicle family for propulsive orbital adjustments post-separation), mission assurance, and post-launch data delivery services.

Spaceflight's Sherpa propulsive tug enables 'last mile' orbital delivery: after the primary launch vehicle deploys satellites into a common rideshare orbit, Sherpa can maneuver individual payload groups to different orbital altitudes or inclinations, expanding the utility of rideshare missions for operators whose desired orbit differs from the primary mission orbit. Competitors include D-Orbit (Italy), Exolaunch, and directly contracted SpaceX Transporter rideshare slots.