Much like on city streets, space traffic can be hectic and near misses are becoming all too common.
Just last year, an in-orbit European Space Agency satellite was forced to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid a collision with a SpaceX satellite.
The cause of the near miss? A bug in SpaceX’s email communication system.
As more and more companies send hardware to space, these occurrences are only going to increase, unless a better avoidance communication system is adopted, said Kayhan Space co-founder and CEO Siamak Hesar.
He compared the current space traffic landscape to that of air traffic control in the 1950s. Some companies have advanced systems to detect potential incidents, but not all of the companies going to space have that same technology.
“As a result, that puts everybody at risk,” he said.
With a PhD in aerospace engineering and prior experience building software for aerospace companies, Hesar said the current space software market can be antiquated and repetitive.
“I saw myself building the same software over and over again for different entities,” he said.
So, along with lifelong friend Araz Feyzi, he built Kayhan Space.
The company, which was founded in 2019 and is dually based in Boulder and Atlanta, has developed a software platform to help government and commercial satellite operators more efficiently and effectively avoid collisions.
The company’s avoidance system sends automated collision notifications, calculates optimal maneuver plans, automatically performs maneuver screening and preemptive collision avoidance and tracks and predicts satellite patterns of life.
The company’s initial customers are small- to mid-size aerospace companies that are looking for a safety software solution as they go to space. Ultimately, much like Salesforce did for sales, Kayhan wants to be a software provider for aerospace companies of all sizes.
“Places like us that bring down the barrier to entry to access to high end software capabilities will really help and allow these medium to small size constellations and operators to be able to fly safely in space,” Hesar said.
Kayhan Space recently completed the Techstars Allied Space Accelerator program and has now brought on its first outside capital to help the company grow.
On Tuesday, Kayhan closed a $600,000 pre-seed funding round led by Overline, an Atlanta-based seed-stage venture capital firm. Investors also included Techstars and Dylan Taylor.
The funding will primarily be used to further expand Kayhan’s team and product.
In recent months, Kayhan Space tripled the size of its team to nine employees, submitted proposals to the U.S. government with a total value of $2 million, won the AFWERX Space Resiliency Challenge and partnered with a commercial space companies.
Kayhan Space currently provides satellite collision assessment and avoidance support to the Naval Postgraduate School and BlackSky missions.
