Momentus Launches First Demonstration Flight on SpaceX Falcon 9

Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) ("Momentus" or the "Company"), a U.S. commercial space company that plans to offer transportation and other in-space infrastructure services, today announced that it has launched its first demonstration flight of the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle to low-earth orbit aboard the SpaceX Transporter-5 mission. Momentus also announced that it has placed its first customer satellite in orbit and plans to conduct more deployments of customer payloads in the coming days.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220525005971/en/

Momentus' Vigoride Orbital Transfer Vehicle. Photo Credit: Niall David.

The versatile Vigoride spacecraft, designed to support a range of transportation and in-space infrastructure services, is slated to perform a series of operations in space to test and demonstrate the performance of the vehicle and its subsystems. Under the company's license from the Federal Communications Commission, the mission is scheduled to last up to 180 days. The mission will also feature the deployment of several customer satellites and the testing of hardware for another customer.

"Today's launch was the culmination of months of work to conduct an extensive ground test campaign, ready the spacecraft, and obtain the necessary government licenses and approvals for our first flight of the Vigoride vehicle," said Momentus Chief Executive Officer John Rood. "We're excited to see our vision of providing transportation and space infrastructure services and being an early provider of these key services to the growing new space economy starting to be realized."

A key part of the Vigoride vehicle is the Microwave Electrothermal Thruster (MET) which uses water as a propellant. The MET produces thrust by expelling extremely hot gases through a rocket nozzle. However, unlike a conventional chemical rocket engine, which creates heat through a chemical reaction, the MET heats propellant using solar microwave energy. Using the MET offers cost-effective, efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly propulsion to meet the demands for in-space transportation and infrastructure services.

"MET technology has been researched in academia since the 1980s, but we're pioneers in bringing it to market," said Rood. "Testing the MET on this first Vigoride flight is one of the important tasks that we plan to conduct as we continue to refine and improve its performance."