Momentus Vigoride 7 to fly DPhi Space hosted payload platform

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California — Momentus announced a partnership Oct. 30 with DPhi Space to fly the Swiss startup’s hosted-payload platform early next year.

Momentus will host the DPhi Space Clustergate-2 payload, which is designed to turn a host spacecraft into a “high-performance hub” on the Vigoride 7 spacecraft, according to the news release.

By working with DPhi, Momentus hopes to knock down obstacles to space-based testing of software and applications, Momentus CEO John Rood told SpaceNews at the MilSat Symposium here.

“By lowering the barrier to entry, we’re empowering organizations to validate their tech, gain flight heritage, and play an active role in shaping the space economy,” Rood said in a statement. “We expect this to open up a new market segment and provide additional revenue from our future missions.”

Customers who join the mission at the outset or sign up when Clustergate-2 reaches orbit will have opportunities to deploy, test, iterate and gain flight heritage for code, software applications and artificial-intelligence algorithms.

“The Clustergate-2 mission focuses on software payloads to enable the deployment and operation of software applications throughout the mission lifecycle, unlocking new opportunities for real-time and autonomous data processing from orbit,” the news release said.

Clustergate-2 includes CPU, FPGA and GPU processing nodes linked to Vigoride sensor and telemetry data.

“This could open doors to a wide range of applications, from environmental monitoring to intelligent satellite operations,” according to the news release. “Any developer on Earth can push code to space.”

DPhi, founded in Lausanne in 2024, sent its first hosted-payload platform Clustergate-1 into orbit in March on a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rideshare.

NASA, Orbit Fab, Portal Space Systems, Pulsar Fusion and Solstar Space have signed up to launch payloads on Vigoride flights.