Portal Space Systems is raising $50M as it prepares to launch its first high-speed orbital vehicle.

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems has raised $50 million in a funding round aimed at accelerating the development of highly maneuverable space vehicles in the Seattle area.

The first such vehicle, Starburst-1, will launch early this fall as a payload on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 satellite rideshare mission. Portal is also preparing to move into a 52,000-square-foot manufacturing facility where future Starburst spaceships and more capable Supernova space vehicles will be built.

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg — who founded the company in 2021 following tech ventures including SpaceX and Stratolaunch Systems — characterized the recently announced Series A funding round as closer to a giant leap than a small step.

“The thing that really excites me, and the company as a whole, is that it helps us move faster,” he told GeekWire. “Obviously we’re focused on getting Starburst and Supernova capabilities up and running to our customers as quickly as possible.”

The round was led by Geodesic Capital and Mach33, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures, AlleyCorp and FUSE. It builds on the $17.5 million seed round announced last year.

Portal is developing a solar thermal propulsion system that will use concentrated sunlight to heat an ammonia-based propeller for its Supernova spacecraft. The system is designed to allow rapid adjustments to the Supernova’s orbit. Orbital maneuvers that would normally take weeks or months to initiate using conventional propulsion systems can be accomplished in hours or days.

The Starburst will use a conventional thruster system, but will take advantage of many of the technologies developed for the Supernova. “Eighty-one percent of the components are shared between Starburst and Supernova,” Thornburg said. “We have a lot of delta-v packed into Starburst, even though it’s a small platform.”

Starburst-1, slated for a possible October launch, will be equipped with a TRL11 video camera and on-board processing system and a Zenno Space Magnetic Actuator for a year-long probe mission in solar orbit.

A test payload called “Mini-Nova” was sent into orbit last month to test the control software and power systems of Starburst and Supernova. “Mini-Nova is healthy … so I think we’re in good shape next time,” Thornburg said.

The first Supernova will be launched next year, thanks in part to $45 million in funding for the US Space Force’s SpaceWERX program. Thornburg said the Supernova-1 could take on any of a variety of missions that “support the needs of the Department of Defense when it comes to immediate control.”

The Portal team has taken a closer look at the mission timeline.

“We have a lot of interest from a lot of different customers, including government alone, as well as commercial companies that work in defense or commerce,” Thornburg said. “So, we’re leaning forward to the second Starburst structure. And then, correspondingly, one of the first uses of the new structure will be the Supernova-1 fusion mission. … We can continue to build Starburst at our existing facility if we want, for some time.”

Portal aims to build up to four spacecraft per month by the end of 2027 – meaning the company will need a large workforce. “We have about 40 people in the company,” said Thornburg. “We will probably double in size within the rest of the year.”

How would Starburst and Supernova be used? “Defensively, what we’re really targeting are areas that I would describe as spatial awareness, or being able to see things that are sometimes hard to see,” Thornburg said. “Then I think the second application in the defense category is defense and defense. We have enemies in the lane that do very conflicting things, and I don’t know that we always have the same strength or deterrence in the same way.”

On the commercial side, Thornburg points to the tracking and removal of orbital debris. “You recently had a Starlink satellite,” he said. “That creates a problem for SpaceX and other people. Getting around this thing costs money and time. So, you see a profit motive for dealing with orbital debris on the commercial side, and monitoring it.”

Portal and an Australian business called Paladin Space recently announced a partnership to create an orbiting waste tracking and removal service that could go into business early next year. Starlab Space, the industrial consortium behind the commercial space station, has already signed a letter of intent to integrate the Portal-Paladin service into future station operations.

Thornburg said Supernova could also play a role in NASA’s Artemis lunar mission, which recently focused on building a permanent lunar base. “We have a mission to be able to move easily between GEO [geostationary Earth orbit] and cislunar domains in a way that can be useful for logistics, exploration, communication, data and other things. “We don’t have many spacecraft that can do that without the help of a rocket right now,” he said.

In all of these cases, Portal intends to use its ability to provide fast travel in space – a strategy that has received strong support from the company’s leading investors. “We are confident that Portal will be Space Mobility Prime in the near future,” said Aaron Burnett, CEO of Mach33 Group.

“The future of space is changing, and that change is being felt around the world,” said Rayfe Gaspar-Asaoka, partner at Geodesic Capital. “Portal Space combines deep mobility expertise with the development of advanced spacecraft designed for mobility, reliability and scale. Geodesic is excited to co-lead Portal’s Series A and work with Jeff and the team as they continue to expand the possibilities in space.”