Sixteen months is not a long time in aerospace. Yet Observable Space, a Los Angeles-based startup stitched together from two smaller companies just over a year ago, has managed to secure both a $90 million Series A and a Pentagon contract worth nearly as much—announcements that arrived on the same late-May morning like a carefully orchestrated one-two punch.
The funding round, led by Lux Capital alongside Upfront Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Island Green Capital, and RTX Ventures, closed on May 28. Hours later, the company revealed a $94 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract from the U.S. Space Force, with $22 million already committed through initial task orders. It's the kind of dual validation that emerging defense contractors dream about, though perhaps more than the founders expected when they announced the merger of OurSky and PlaneWave Instruments on February 5, 2025.
The timing isn't coincidental. Space domain awareness—the military's term for tracking what's happening in orbit—has become an urgent priority as low Earth orbit grows more congested and contested. Observable Space's pitch: vertically integrated hardware that can monitor satellites from the ground, communicate with them via laser, and eventually watch from space itself.
Mobile Telescopes for a Contested Domain
The Space Force contract falls under the service's APFIT program, specifically supporting what the Pentagon calls the Deployable Attritable Optical initiative. In defense parlance, "attritable" means systems designed to be lost or replaced without catastrophic consequences—a philosophy gaining traction as adversaries develop anti-satellite capabilities.
Observable Space will build mobile, off-grid optical ground stations for space monitoring. Think telescopes that can be packed up and repositioned, operating independently of traditional infrastructure. According to Aviation Week, that initial $22 million task order funds these mobile systems, which represent a shift away from the exquisite, billion-dollar ground installations that have long defined military space surveillance.
Whether the approach scales remains an open question. But for now, the Space Force appears willing to bet on volume and flexibility over singular, irreplaceable assets.
Three Product Lines, One Bet
The company's strategy is ambitious, perhaps overly so for such a young operation. Observable Space is simultaneously pursuing laser communications ground stations, terrestrial optical sensing systems, and space-based imaging payloads—three distinct product categories that rarely coexist under one roof.
The lasercom stations feature large-aperture integrated transmitters with 4 kHz closed-loop tracking and adaptive optics, supporting both QPSK coherent and NRZ OOK links. (Translation: fast, precise laser communication with satellites, using multiple data encoding schemes.) On the space hardware side, the company has developed "Iguana," a 200mm multi-spectral imager carrying 70 TOPS of onboard processing power. Its first launch is scheduled for later this year aboard an Apex satellite bus.
The company claims its network already spans more than 40 ground sites, having executed 2.6 million automated tasks, identified over 20 million targets, and logged 84,000 hours of continuous orbital monitoring. Those are substantial numbers for a company that didn't exist in its current form eighteen months ago, though the figures presumably incorporate legacy operations from PlaneWave and OurSky.
Observable Space now employs more than 175 people as of late May 2026. Its manufacturing base sits in Adrian, Michigan—PlaneWave's original home—with expansion plans for downtown Detroit, a city eager to reclaim some manufacturing identity beyond automotive assembly lines.
The Investor Roster and the Raytheon Angle
BRV Capital, Fathom Fund, and Venrex also participated in the Series A, joining a syndicate that includes some familiar names in defense-tech investing. RTX Ventures' involvement carries particular weight; the corporate arm of RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) doesn't typically back companies without strategic intent. The funding announcement included language about Observable Space's partnership with Raytheon on "next-generation optical systems," though specifics remain vague.
The company had raised approximately $11 million through its merger period, with Upfront Ventures anchoring earlier seed rounds. Now, with $90 million in fresh capital, Observable Space plans to scale its lasercom partnerships, accelerate in-space systems development, and expand internationally—a roadmap that will test whether its vertically integrated model can actually deliver on all three fronts simultaneously.
Detroit Venture Partners' backing ties into the company's Michigan manufacturing ambitions. Observable Space participated in Detroit's Reindustrialize Summit in June, a gathering that seeks to position the city as more than a political punchline or automotive relic.
The Founders Behind the Merger
CEO Dan Roelker comes from SpaceX, where he worked in software engineering during the company's formative years. Co-founder and President Rick Hedrick brings two decades of telescope manufacturing experience from PlaneWave Instruments, which he led before the merger. It's a pairing that reflects the company's dual identity: Silicon Valley operational tempo meets precision optical hardware.
Whether that combination can navigate the Pentagon's procurement labyrinth while simultaneously chasing commercial laser communication contracts and developing space payloads—well, that's the $90 million question investors are now betting on. The company has momentum, capital, and a Space Force contract in hand.
What it doesn't have yet is much margin for error.
