WASHINGTON – Momentus announced an agreement March 11 to provide Vigoride space tug customers with on-demand connectivity through a partnership with Solstar Space.
Momentus plans to perform the first on-orbit demonstration in early 2026 of Solstar’s Deke Space Communicator, a narrowband data-relay transceiver designed to offer persistent communication links between satellites and payload operators on the ground as well as between spacecraft.
“It’s going to provide an interesting capability, both for Momentus as well as for customers that fly with us to be able to communicate on demand,” Momentus CEO John Rood told SpaceNews.
On-demand communications will be particularly helpful, Rood said, for mission operators investigating or resolving anomalies, or conducting proximity operations.
While Momentus has designed “a lot of autonomy into proximity operations, if you start to have more continuous communications coverage, like Solstar provides, this really opens up the boundaries,” Rood said.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the anchor customer for the Vigoride flight scheduled to launch in February 2026. Momentus will perform robotic assembly of a large antenna-like structure in low-Earth orbit under a $3.5 million award for phase 3 of the Novel Orbital and Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program.
Sharing the Vigoride bus will be a multispectral rendezvous and proximity operations demonstration for AFWERX.
“We’ll release a small satellite. Then, we’ll get close and observe it with infrared, lidar and optical sensors,” Rood said.
The flight also will accomodate commercial customers, including some who were scheduled to fly on a 2024 Vigoride flight.
Deke Space Communicator
Through the Vigoride flight, “we’re going to be able to test all aspects of the Deke Space Communicator and add value to Momentus, our initial customer for this,” Brian Barnett, Solstar founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “We’re going to test the local area Wi-Fi and provide the spacecraft with a satellite-internet connection in low-Earth orbit. The Deke provides 24/7, two-way connectivity to the desktop.”
This will be the first test of Solstar’s technology in low-Earth orbit. Solstar demonstrated its Wi-Fi technology on two Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital capsules and an Up Aerospace rocket.
Satellite and payload operators are no longer satisfied with intermittent communications, Barnett said, because they want the ability to task instruments and receive data instantaneously.
Beyond the February flight, Momentus and Solstar are exploring opportunities to offer additional hosted-payload and data-relay services.
