Advanced Space

Advanced Space is a space engineering company based in Westminster, Colorado. It helps customers plan and run space missions. Its stated purpose is to enable the sustainable exploration, development and settlement of space.

The company does not build hardware. Instead, it designs a solution, finds the hardware that will make it work, and then partners with the right companies to deliver it. Advanced Space says it used this method on its CAPSTONE and Oracle missions. Its engineers are not split into departments. This lets the company move people with several skills onto new projects quickly.

CAPSTONE is the best known mission. It launched toward the Moon in June 2022 and arrived in November 2022. It served as a pathfinder for NASA's Artemis program. It also showed the company's own peer-to-peer navigation system, called the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System. The company says CAPSTONE is the first privately owned satellite to orbit the Moon. Its mission list also includes Oracle and ESCAPADE.

Services fall into three groups. Mission enabling services cover mission and flight optimization, mission design and systems engineering. Technology and software solutions cover AI and machine learning for autonomy, flight-proven applications and large-scale analysis. Mission solutions cover turn-key missions and the purchase of data and capabilities.

The detailed skills list is long. It includes space navigation, spacecraft autonomy, proximity operations, low energy trajectories, guidance, navigation and control, launch strategies, trajectory optimization, orbit determination, maneuver design, space domain awareness, payload trade studies and project management.

Advanced Space says it has supported more than 28 missions. Its work spans civil, commercial and national security space. It lists contracts and working ties with NASA, AFRL, USSF, IARPA, prime contractors, commercial operators, international space agencies and start-ups. It also supports government and defense partners with astrodynamics and cislunar operations.

The company says it does not sell time by the hour through open-ended contract vehicles. It aims to be a long-term partner that helps customers solve hard problems.

Services

• Mission design
• Mission and flight optimization
• Mission systems engineering
• Space navigation
• Spacecraft autonomy
• Trajectory optimization
• Orbit determination
• Space domain awareness
• AI and machine learning autonomy
• Turn-key missions