Momentus prepares to host 10 demonstration payloads on Vigoride 7 flight

SAN FRANCISCO – Momentus’ Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle is at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California ahead of a 10-month mission to demonstrate rendezvous and proximity operations, robotic in-space assembly, advanced communications and computing technologies.

The Vigoride 7 mission with 10 hosted payloads has been integrated with a launch plate that will be sent into orbit on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-16 rideshare no earlier than March 29.

“The thing all these payloads have in common is they’re all at the leading edge of new space technology,” Momentus CEO John Rood told SpaceNew. “Vigoride is a flexible platform that can support many activities in a cost-effective, innovative way.”

With Vigoride 7, the vehicle’s first flight since 2023, Momentus will fly payloads for NASA, the Defense Advanced Projects Agency, Air Force Research Laboratory, SpaceWERX, Portal Space Systems, Orbit Fab, CisLunar Industries, DPhi Space and Solstar Space.

Vigoride-7 Lineup

• SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force, awarded Momentus a contract for an on-orbit demonstration of a low-cost multispectral rendezvous and proximity operations sensor suite.
• For the DARPA NOM4D Program, Momentus will “validate the functionality, performance, and reliability” of an in-space assembly payload.
• Under a Space Act Agreement with NASA Johnson Space Center, Momentus will demonstrate joint rendezvous and proximity operations and formation flying. NASA’s R5 Spacecraft 10 will act as a free-flying imager to assess the health and performance of Vigoride 7. Data collected by the NASA satellite will be transferred to Vigoride 7 through intersatellite links.
• Portal Space Systems will test its advanced spacecraft computing and avionics suite, which is designed for autonomous operations in high-radiation, thermally dynamic environments.
• Vigoride 7 will host a CisLunar Industries payload to test scalable power delivery architectures critical to high-thrust propulsion and in-space assembly, under a contract from NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center.
• With AFRL funding, Momentus will host Orbit Fab’s Podracer Infrared Imaging Suite, designed for space domain awareness, threat detection” and orbital calibration experiments.
• Solstar’s Deke Space Communicator will demonstrate narrowband communications between spacecraft, Space Wi-Fi for proximity operations and persistent space-to-ground communications.
• DPhi Space’s Clustergate-2 payload with CPU, FPGA and GPU processing nodes linked to Vigoride sensor and telemetry data will enable software or algorithms to be deployed, tested and gain flight heritage.
• Vigoride 7 also will fly an additively manufactured fuel tank designed by Momentus and manufactured by Velo3D.

The Vigoride 7 payloads will be operated through Momentus’ control center in San Jose, California.