space-domain-awareness
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BlackSky knows when the picture changes.
A satellite image can tell you what is there. BlackSky sells the next look - and the software to work out what changed.
FTI Defense and the Art of Keeping Things Running
A radar, a repair crew, a mountain of incompatible data. FTI Defense has built a business around the awkward space between owning military equipment and knowing whether it will work.
Slingshot Quit Watching Earth to Build Air Traffic Control for Space
The Austin-born startup cast too wide a net, killed its original geospatial business, then bought the eyes and memory needed to make orbit legible. Now its software helps satellite operators dodge debris and Space Force Guardians rehearse a conflict that has not happened yet.
Diffraqtion
Diffraqtion is a Somerville, Massachusetts deeptech company building what it calls the first quantum camera for satellites and telescopes. Spun out of research at MIT and the University of Maryland, its photon-counting sensors paired with AI aim to extract far more information from incoming light than conventional CMOS or CCD sensors, letting smaller, cheaper optics see beyond the diffraction limit. The company targets space domain awareness, defense, and Earth observation, and raised $4.2M in pre-seed funding in January 2026 alongside a DARPA SBIR contract.
RBC Signals
RBC Signals is a Seattle-area space communications company that runs a global Ground Station as a Service (GSaaS) network, moving data between satellites and Earth for commercial, government, and research operators. Built on a sharing-economy model, it stitches together company-owned antennas and unused capacity from partner-owned ground stations into a single on-demand network of more than 80 antennas across 60-plus locations. Alongside downlink and telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) services, the company has expanded into dynamic and fractional spectrum leasing through its STORM platform, giving satellite operators flexible, pay-for-what-you-use access to the ground and spectrum they need.
True Anomaly
True Anomaly is a Colorado-based space defense company building the hardware and software to operate, defend, and win in contested orbit. Its flagship Jackal autonomous orbital vehicle - a highly maneuverable, refrigerator-sized spacecraft - is paired with Mosaic, a full-stack mission autonomy and command-and-control platform. Founded in 2022 by Air Force and Space Force veterans, the company sells primarily to the U.S. Space Force and Department of the Air Force, has raised more than $1 billion across four rounds, and is valued at $2.2 billion after its April 2026 Series D.
Scout Space
Scout Space is a Reston, Virginia defense and space company building the sensing layer for orbit. It develops electro-optical and infrared sensors (Owl and Sparrow), onboard autonomy software co-developed with the U.S. Space Force, and edge-processing and mission-design platforms that let spacecraft detect, track, and characterize objects in orbit - even without ground contact. Scout's pitch: a proliferated network of in-space sensors is fundamental to operating safely in an increasingly crowded and contested orbital environment.