Impulse Space to launch SES satellites

WASHINGTON — Impulse Space has signed an agreement with satellite operator SES to transport that company’s satellites to medium and geostationary orbits.

The companies announced May 22 that they signed a multi-launch agreement that starts with a mission in 2027 where Impulse’s Helios kick stage, placed into low Earth orbit by a medium-class rocket, will send a four-ton SES satellite from LEO to GEO within eight hours. The announcement did not disclose the vehicle that will launch Helios and the satellite, or the specific SES satellite.

The agreement, the companies said, includes an “opportunity” for additional missions to transport SES satellites to GEO or medium Earth orbits.

Impulse Space said this was the first commercial contract for a dedicated mission for Helios, a high-performance transfer vehicle the company announced in early 2024. The company designed the vehicle to carry satellites weighing up to five tons from LEO to GEO in less than a day. Such satellites, using conventional kick stages or electric propulsion, can takes weeks to months to transit to GEO.

“We believe MEO and GEO play a critical role in the space economy, but operators today face the challenges of slow, expensive, and inflexible access to these essential orbits,” Tom Mueller, founder and chief executive of Impulse Space, said in a statement. Helios, by contrast, “is built to move large payloads to high-energy orbits quickly and reliably.”

“Today, we’re not only partnering with Impulse to bring our satellites faster to orbit, but this will also allow us to extend their lifetime and accelerate service delivery to our customers,” Adel Al-Saleh, chief executive of SES, said in the same statement.

Mueller noted that SES has been willing to innovate and experiment in space access. The company was the first GEO satellite operator to use a SpaceX Falcon 9, and also the first to fly a satellite on a reused Falcon 9 booster.

While SES is the first commercial customer for a dedicated Helios mission, Impulse Space has signed up other customers. In September, it announced a contract with French startup Space Network Services to launch up to six small GEO satellites through a geostationary rideshare program Impulse announced a month earlier.

Impulse Space also won a $34.5 million contract in October to support two U.S. military space missions, Victus Surgo and Victus Salo. While both those missions will use Impulse’s smaller Mira vehicle, on Victus Surgo the Mira tug, carrying an optical payload, will be transported to GEO on a Helios tug.