Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Impulse Space’s Geosynchronous Update, $300M Series C Round & IPO Prospects with Impulse Space CEO Tom Mueller 8/7/25

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Impulse Space is expanding further into space. The in-space services startup has two space tugs in low earth orbit, but an upgraded spacecraft capable of going to geosynchronous orbit will launch this fall. Founder & CEO Tom Mueller was a founding member of SpaceX where his work on propulsion led the way for reusable rocket engines. He joins Morgan Brennan to discuss the new frontier, the startup’s $300M Series C funding round, and the potential for an IPO.

Impulse space is expanding farther into space. The startup has two Mira space tugs in low Earth orbit. This fall, an upgraded spacecraft capable of going to geosynchronous orbit will launch, establishing a new market. It's a super important orbit. There's a lot of government things happening up there. There's a lot of, you know, commercial, civil and government things that happen up there. Medium Earth orbit, too.

So Mira is now capable of going to basically anywhere. on the solar system. Tom Mueller was a founding member of SpaceX, employee number one, where his work on propulsion helped crack the code on reusable rocket engines. He founded Impulse Space in 2021 to offer in-space mobility, think transportation and services for satellites in orbit. It's a big bet on the future he believes SpaceX will help unlock. That's why I founded Impulse, really based on the premise of Starship, which is really the next

step in reducing cost and increasing access to space. When that thing becomes fully reusable and can take over 100 tons to lower orbit every time it flies, I think that's really, I always say, the start of the Trudor Space Age, where it's so easy to get to space at that point. Now, what are the killer apps that we're gonna come up with that we need to move those things around in space?

And that's what I'm here for is for that future. Impulse recently raised $300 million in a Series C funding round to hire more people, develop more products, and produce more of its Mira and Helios spacecraft. On this episode, Impulse is Mueller, on the space age, and whether an IPO is in the stars. I'm Morgan Brennan, and this is Manifest Space. Joining me now, Tom Mueller, the CEO of Impulse Space, creator of Impulse Space, and Tom, it's great to speak with you again. Thank you.

to be here. So first, just to take a step back, let's review. What does impulse space make? And then we'll go from there. So we make, we do in space mobility. So we make spacecraft that are capable of moving around in space. You have updates to share on one of your spacecraft, Mira. Yeah. So we have two Mira spacecraft that are flying right now. One's been flying coming up on two years. The other one was launched earlier this year. And now we have, through system test, an upgraded one that's going to fly this fall on Falcon 9. And we've, yeah, we've done a bunch of upgrades to it. This one is capable of going up to geo-synchronous orbit, whereas the current two that are flying are in Leo, lower orbit. And what is the value proposition of being able to move out to

higher orbits? Well, every orbit has needs for mobility. So it's a lot harder to go to geo because first of all, it's hard to get out there, which is what our Helios product can help do is get out to these high energy orbits. But the radiation environment is much harsher out there. So there's a lot of design changes that need to be made in order to operate out there. But geo is one of the most important orbits. It's a geostationary, which means that things that are in that orbit are fixed, relative to the surface of the Earth. So you point like your direct TV antenna at a certain spot in the southern sky, and that satellite's always there.

So it's a super important orbit. There's a lot of government things happening up there. There's a lot of commercial, civil and government things that happen up there. Medium Earth orbit, too. So Mira is now capable of going to basically anywhere in the solar system. Yeah. So these are all the big, fancy, multi-billion dollar. so-called exquisite spacecraft that might need some attention? Is that the way to think about it in the

market there? Yep. Yeah, and things that need protected assets that need protected. So working with our government partners, we, you know, we're working on things that help us protect our assets in space. How do you protect assets in space? What are some of the ways? So a good example is GPS. GPS has probably trillions of dollars of value, you know, like everything from landing aircraft to, you know, your door dash deliveries to Uber. It's basically unprotected. Like, you know, most of our assets, especially trillion dollar assets are well protected militarily. But space is really kind of unprotected, right? right now. So I think there's a lot of emphasis right now by the space force to be able to protect our assets on space. And we provide, you know, in space mobility, be able to move to those orbits and around in those orbits. So whatever they need to do up there, we're here to provide solutions. So for example, maybe you move, maybe you shift a satellite over or refuel. I just

want to, I just want to better understand when we talk about some of these. you know, on-orbit capabilities, what they actually are and why they matter so much now? Yeah. Anything. Yeah, refueling is coming up. We actually have a mission to do refueling with orbit tab. That's something that's coming on right now. What's called RAPO, ROND Proximity Ops, something that we're actively working on also. Also, just we're hosting government payloads commercial payloads civil payloads government payloads um some of the government payloads are could be uh electronic warfare uh you know telescopes you know optical things i don't lots of classify things that i don't even even even know but um we provide a platform

that can that can host those um if they want to deploy something we can we can launch you know kubats off of our platform um but we can also because we we use chemical propulsion, we can move fast. We have, you know, on the order of 50 pounds of thrust on our spacecraft, which is a lot in space. We can in just a number of hours change our orbits, whereas with electric propulsion, it can take months to change orbits. So we can move very fast relative to other things that are up there in space. Are you the only ones in the marketplace that have this chemical propulsion into this capability? Nope. I think we're one of the leaders in the market, but there's others that can do it.

Yeah, and for I think folks that maybe don't realize and understand your employee number one at SpaceX, and you are sort of seen as the, as the guru of modern day propulsion for everything you sort of crafted and created there when we talk about things like reusable rocket engines. Yeah, my whole career has been liquid propulsion, liquid rockets. And now I'm kind of back to really where I started when I was at TRW, which is now north of Grumman, which is actually just two blocks this way from our headquarters. And there I started with spacecraft propulsion, you know, back in the mid-80s, late 80s. And now I'm kind of back to doing very high-performance spacecraft propulsion.

Like this little engine you can see right here behind me. That's really cool. So is that little engine right behind you? Is that an example of an engine that's in space right now? Yeah, that's the engine. There's eight of those on each of the mirror spacecraft. That's a six-pound thruster, and there's eight of those on each of those spacecraft that we have on orbit. How quickly is impulse growing?

Very fast right now. We're going to talk about the series C round that we just raised earlier this year, 300 million. And we're hiring right now to build up our team, to develop, you know, scale production and increase our R&D. And that's for Mira and some of the other products that you already have in the pipeline? Yeah, Mira and Helios are two of the things that we're accelerating. Do you produce them all there at your headquarters? I guess how does that work? What does full-scale production look like? We do, yeah. In fact, when we do a tour, people ask, like, what, like, you're looking at the spacecraft in the cleaner room, they'll ask, what do you make?

And it's actually easier to tell them what we don't make, which, what do we not make? We don't make the cameras. We don't make the liners of the composites. it uh propellant tanks we but we wrap them with carbon fiber um but everything else we make we machine the chassis here we print the engines um we design the circuit boards both for the for the abionics and for the radios um we send those out to have them made but we design the actual circuits um so yeah a lot of it's done right here we're in a we're in a 60 000 square foot facility right now but we just signed lease on two buildings just on the same block another 240,000 square feet. So we'll have 300,000 square feet total space here by the end of the

year that we're using. Wow. So you're expanding and expanding quickly. Yeah, and it's actually the buildings that were leasing down the street that was actually shipping and receiving for TRW. I was in those buildings 30 years ago. That's a full circle moment. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Okay, so if we stick with that for a minute how much has how much has the space economy changed in that 30 years from from you know formerly working at TRW to not taking over the building tremendously you know um and i think i think really my former company uh SpaceX really has helped change the space economy by greatly reducing the cost of access to space allowing you know a whole bunch of of startups with actually as you know a lot of ex-spacexers like me out

starting new companies and really proliferating what we can do in space now. Payloads, vehicles, all kinds of cool things happening in space now. So what do you think this next year is? If we've lowered the cost of access to space dramatically, is it really now, and I guess perhaps this speaks to the company that you're building with impulse, does this speak to the next step or the next chapter being sort of all this in-space operation and activity and mobility? Well, absolutely. That's why I founded Impulse, really based on the premise of Starship, which is really the next step in reducing cost and increasing access to space.

When that thing becomes fully reusable and can take over 100 tons to lower orbit every time it flies, I think that's really, I always say, the start of the Truder Space Age, where it's so easy to get to space at that point. Now, what are the killer apps that we're going to come up with that we need to move those things around in space? And that's what I'm here for is for that future. So you probably are watching the Starship launches, the test flights very closely.

Absolutely, huge fans now. Yeah. I am going to ask you what you think of everything that's been going on with Elon since SpaceX and some of his other companies have been pulled in directly or indirectly with some of the, political drama we've seen play out come and go in the last couple months you know Elon just it's unbelievable how many how many balls he juggled at one time he's he's just doing everything

it's amazing it's amazing to watch um so looking i guess longer term into the future for impulse what is the game plan especially as we do start to see some of these new space companies go public whether it was Voyager recently or firefly aerospace is getting ready to start trading And not by SPAC. Yes, exactly. Although I think there's another one of those recently, but yes. That too. Yeah, no, it's great.

It's, you know, that's just a testament to how strong the economy is and how fast space is growing. It's pretty exciting. Is that something that you would consider at some point? Possibly. We don't really think about that yet, but who knows? That could be in our future. So I guess some of the next key milestones, whether it's something. through the rest of this year or into the next few years

that we should be watching for Impulse? Well, we have that upgraded mirror right now in the clean room. It's already been through system tests. So it's basically hands off now. It's getting delivered to SpaceX later this month. Wait, later next month. And it gets launched this fall. Then we have a bunch more mirrors.

I think we have about eight in production over the next year. mostly for government missions. And then another huge product we have is Helios, which is a kick stage that we do. It basically adds like a third stage to Falcon 9, which can take payloads from lowerth orbit to geosicrous orbit in a day. That's going to be flying next year. It's on schedule to fly in the third quarter of next year.

So, you know, a lot of cool stuff happening right now. And then just finally, this intersection of, I would say policy investing right now, whether it's on the civil side, the military and national security side for space or even on the commercial side. I guess how do you see this moment and how it evolves? Well, I think our ambassadors are really accelerating their programs in space, and we are ahead of them, but we got to continue to accelerate to keep up with them, or to stay ahead of them. So commercial companies like Impulse have, you know, have the hardware to rapidly answer, you know, what the needs of our military. Well, Tom Mueller. I've been Pulse Space. Thank

you so much. It's always great to speak with you. You bet. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts and by watching our coverage on closing bell overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.