In Orbit Aerospace

In Orbit Aerospace is an aerospace and logistics company originally founded to enable large-scale manufacturing and research in space. Its initial product line centered on the Retriever re-entry vehicle, designed to host customer experiments and in-space manufacturing payloads and return finished products to Earth, together with the Resource Exchange Module (REX), a removable pressurized payload bay that can also serve as a module on permanent orbital platforms and enable sorting and transfer of payloads between two docked spacecraft. The concept paired orbital platforms hosting customer factories and labs with uncrewed, reusable re-entry vehicles that would autonomously rendezvous and dock with those platforms, with a robotic system transferring manufactured material to the vehicle for return. The vehicles were designed to be compatible with multiple launch vehicles to support high flight frequency at low cost.

In approximately March 2025 the company pivoted away from re-entry spacecraft to stratospheric cargo delivery, driven by customer interest. Its current product is StratoDrop, a high-altitude autonomous delivery platform that transports critical supplies into environments that are difficult to reach because of conflict or environmental disaster. The company states the system flies out of range of adversarial countermeasures and can land cargo within meters of a target location hundreds of miles from the launch point. In Orbit is also developing a mid-air deployment decelerator that allows a high-altitude balloon to rapidly inflate and stabilize, reaching station in a fraction of the usual time, under an Air Force Research Laboratory Rocket Cargo program contract.

Founding story

The company was founded to enable large-scale manufacturing and research in space, building on advances that allowed breakthrough products to be produced in microgravity, with the aim of building and operating a space-based manufacturing supply chain.

Business model

The company develops and manufactures hardware systems sold to government and defense customers, combining research and development contracts (SBIR awards and development awards) with batch production and unit sales of StratoDrop systems. Earlier plans envisioned a services model in which the company would host customer payloads on orbital platforms and return products to Earth, acting as a third-party logistics provider for Earth-to-space commerce.

Revenue to date is derived from US government contracts and purchase orders, including research and development awards and initial production batches, with contracts positioned toward higher-volume StratoDrop production in 2026.

Traction

In Orbit reports a $2 million award from a Special Forces organization for modular StratoDrop variants, including $700,000 of initial batch production and sales; a $1.25 million Air Force Research Laboratory Phase II SBIR for a mid-air deployment system for high-altitude balloons; a first purchase order from Air Force Central Command for an initial batch of StratoDrop systems; and active CRADAs with USSOCOM and US Army DEVCOM. A directory listing tallies roughly $5.2 million across six government awards from the Department of Defense and NASA. As of December 2023 the company had raised about $2 million and was fundraising to support a demonstration mission in early 2025.

Latest developments

In November 2025 the company received verbal notification of a $2 million award from a Special Forces organization to develop larger StratoDrop variants with modular payloads, with roughly 60% for R&D and 40% for initial batch production, expected within 60 days. Contracts are directed toward high-volume StratoDrop production in 2026, and the company is listed as raising a seed round.