Proteus Space Launches First AI Designed Spacecraft, Sets Multiple Records

VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE, CA – November 28, 2025 – Proteus Space announced the successful launch and first contact of MERCURY ONE, its inaugural four-payload ESPA class spacecraft. 

MERCURY ONE marks the fastest timeline from a blank sheet design to a launch-qualified ESPA satellite, completed in only 9 months, validating the company’s cutting-edge MERCURY™ platform with TRL9 flight heritage. Proteus Space conducted all design, AI&T, launch brokering, licensing, launch integration, LEOPs and Operations in-house, demonstrating full lifecycle capabilities for payload and mission owners seeking single source rapid access to space.

Executed under a SpaceWERX and AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate contract, the mission validates a technological paradigm shift in ultra-rapid payload-tailored and mission-optimized satellite design and AI&T. 

“This Thanksgiving launch of our record setting MERCURY ONE mission culminates an incredible year of successes for our team, government sponsors, payload partners and innovation minded customers,” said Proteus Space CEO, David Kervin. “Twelve months ago we had no mature design, no payloads and no metal in house for this first of its kind, ESPA class, four payload spacecraft. Think about that. It’s a huge testament to what technology enabled humans can do with our MERCURY™ platform, which drives down cost, schedule and risk and allowed us to accomplish all of this with nothing more than seed-stage capital and SBIR funding. We’re going to be offering a beta SaaS of MERCURY™ for commercial and government customers by the end of next year, which will become a watershed event in the space industry. I’m incredibly proud of what our small team has accomplished and can’t wait to show the world what we’re doing in 2026.”

The MERCURY ONE satellite was designed and engineered using MERCURY™, enabling a rapid payload-tailored bus design for payloads from multiple collaborators, including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, UC Davis and Leonardo DRS. Remarkably, Leonardo DRS was able to add their radio payload after the spacecraft Preliminary Design Review (PDR) was complete – and just 7 months prior to scheduled launch – a feat nearly impossible with traditional spacecraft development approaches.

“The responsiveness of the MERCURY™ rapid concurrent spacecraft engineering platform enabled us to accelerate the critical on-orbit testing of our payload to meet market opportunity timelines,” said John Corbean, Vice President of Advanced Technologies for the Leonardo DRS AIS Business Unit. “Integrating our payload onto the MERCURY ONE bus after PDR, without any schedule impacts or major bus redesigns, demonstrates the unique advantages of this innovative approach to payload-tailored and mission-optimized satellite development.”

About Proteus Space and MERCURY™
MERCURY™ is our patent-pending, AI-enabled, deterministic, physics-anchored, multi-objective, rapid concurrent engineering platform. MERCURY™ leverages advanced methods to eliminate manual design bottlenecks and rapidly generate payload-tailored, mission-closing, quickly manufacturable satellite systems. The launch and orbit of MERCURY ONE provides TRL9 flight-heritage to MERCURY™.

MERCURY™ provides customers with the first true path to elastic space capacity by rapidly executing and validating complex mission designs at machine speed. This unprecedented capability allows for the generation of non-proprietary, vendor agnostic design definitions, eliminating proprietary vendor lock and breaking the reliance on single-source suppliers. 

MERCURY™ compresses the spacecraft definition and AI&T life-cycle from years to months, delivering full Design Packages with Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) validation on record timelines. This transformational speed and scale, backed by Unlimited Data Rights to the resulting design specifications, fundamentally changes the ability to rapidly prototype and field responsive space assets on radically shorter timelines. 

https://www.proteus-space.com
https://www.linkedin.com/company/proteus-space

Media Contact:
media@proteus-space.com