Proteus Space Selected

Proteus Space, a dual-use aerospace company, has been selected by The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc. for an advanced on-orbit mission under a multi-year agreement. The company will provide tailored, end-to-end rapid access to space services, including rapid spacecraft design, assembly, integration and test, licensing, launch brokerage, launch integration, and on-orbit commissioning and operations, with the exact terms of the agreement not specified by the source, Draper or Proteus Space.

Mission Details

The mission is expected to benefit from Proteus Space's custom bus and mission solutions, which are designed to shrink timelines, maximize mission and payload performance, and avoid the uncertainty, compromises, risks and costs associated with standardized satellite bus integration campaigns. According to David Kervin, founder and CEO of Proteus Space, this award adds to a growing portfolio of national security, civil, and commercial space programs for Proteus.

Partnership Rationale

Draper selected Proteus Space because of its ability to solve problems that don't have off-the-shelf answers, said Aaron Blow, Vice President and General Manager, Space Systems at Draper. Proteus' ability to move from concept to customized spacecraft hardware on a compressed timeline is a strong match for what Draper requires. The company's patent-pending, AI-native, autonomous digital engineering platform allows it to rapidly generate machinable, mission-tailored spacecraft designs with accompanying high-fidelity, digital twins and models.

Company Overview

Proteus Space is a Los Angeles-based dual-use aerospace company that provides rapid, one-stop access to space. The company designs mission-tailored spacecraft from blank sheet through PDR and CDR, performs assembly, integration, and test in its own facility in downtown Los Angeles, brokers all licensing and launch, conducts launch integration and delivers on-orbit LEOPs and operations from its own internal mission operations centers. Draper, on the other hand, is a non-profit research, development, and manufacturing company that solves some of the nation's most important challenges, with more than 2,600 employees working in collaboration across 12 locations.

The source, spacenews.com, reports that Proteus Space's automated computational engineering platform turns payload and mission requirements into high-fidelity, manufacturing-ready spacecraft designs and digital twins in a fraction of the traditional timeline. This capability is expected to play a key role in the advanced on-orbit mission with Draper, although the exact details of the mission and the timeline for its completion are not specified in the source report.