WASHINGTON — Quantum Space has raised $40 million to advance development of its Ranger spacecraft with a new focus on national security applications.
The company, based in Rockville, Maryland, announced June 10 that it closed a $40 million extension of a $17 million Series A round. Prime Movers Lab, Sporos Capital, 1802 Ventures, AnD Ventures and others participated in the round.
The funding would support work on a spacecraft called Ranger. Quantum Space originally designed Ranger as part of a cislunar architecture called QuantumNet. The company also pitched Ranger to NASA to support alternative approaches to Mars Sample Return, winning a study contract last year to show how Ranger could support the “anchor leg” of bringing Mars samples from cislunar space back to Earth.
Now, though, the company is focused on national security roles for Ranger. “We’ve done a pretty significant pivot here,” said Kerry Wisnosky, chief executive of Quantum Space, in an interview.
That earlier concept of QuantumNet is still the company’s “north star,” he said, but the near-term focus is showing how Ranger can be used in national security. “It’s really to align it with this inflection point that’s going on in national security today,” he said. “The reality is our national defense architecture needs to be more agile, more persistent and responsive than what’s currently up there.”
The company is proposing Ranger as a highly maneuverable platform that could host a wide range of payloads. “It’s a high-delta-V modular platform that has a unique ability to maneuver on demand,” he said. “We have the ability to get into any orbit from LEO to cislunar and persist for up to 15 years.”
Ranger would have a minimum delta-V, or change in velocity, of 2.5 kilometers per second, he said, although the upper limit remains proprietary. The spacecraft can host up to 6,000 kilograms of payload and can also refuel other spacecraft.
Wisnosky said the company is well along in the development of the first Ranger spacecraft, including completing load testing of the spacecraft structure and ordering long-lead hardware. The company is currently planning a launch of the first Ranger in the fourth quarter of 2026 and has a launch services agreement in place with an undisclosed provider.
That mission, he said, will primarily be a test flight of Ranger, with an “emphasis to demonstrate the ability for high maneuverability in multiple orbits.”
One key opportunity for Ranger that Quantum Space wants to pursue is a role in the Golden Dome missile defense system. The company announced May 20 that it hired Richard Matlock, a former Defense Department official who worked on missile defense, as its senior vice president for national security space programs.
Golden Dome “has the potential to change our whole scalability plan of the company,” Wisnosky said. “We’ve been focusing a lot of our efforts on how we take this capability to ensure the Golden Dome architecture has superiority in space with the current threats and envisioned threats in the future.”
He said Quantum Space sees Ranger as a platform that could host payloads needed for Golden Dome, from missile tracking to interceptors. The company has talked with the Missile Defense Agency about roles for Ranger in Golden Dome.
“Depending on how that plays out, we could be building scores of these spacecraft in the future for this application,” he said. “This capability is a game changer for Golden Dome.”
Wisnosky added that the company is pursuing other uses for Ranger outside of national security space, such as commercial satellite servicing. One role for Ranger would be to extend the lives of communications satellites in geostationary orbit.
He said the company has talked with “at least 20” GEO satellite operators about Ranger. “We’re in pretty serious discussions with at least four of those operators right now.”
The national security use of Ranger, though, is the key driver for the company and help it close the new funding round.
“Having the capability to be able to maneuver and refuel and host multiple payloads for different mission sets is really what I believe the U.S. and our allies need as we focus on space superiority,” Wisnosky said. “Having this capability for the commercial market is a game changer for them as well.”
