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Manifest Space Closes Oversubscribed $1.15M Pre-Seed to Build Onboard Space Traffic Awareness for Every Spacecraft
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Funding takes the company's first optical beacon to flight on SpaceX's Transporter-18
LOS ANGELES — June 9, 2026 — Manifest Space today announced the close of an oversubscribed $1.15 million Pre-Seed round to build onboard space traffic awareness for every spacecraft, beginning with technology that makes satellites easier to find, identify, and recover during the riskiest phases of a mission.
Hypernova Fund joined as Manifest's first institutional investor, alongside E2MC Ventures, C2 Ventures, Marlboro Lane Ventures, P3A, and strategic backing from NEC X. Angel investors Steve Johnston, Andy Bette, and Rikard Steiber also participated. The round drew backers from across aerospace, deep technology, and venture capital, including C2 Ventures' first investment in the space sector.
ORBIT HAS NO COMMON SIGNAL
As launch cadence accelerates and rideshare missions deploy dozens of near-identical satellites into the same orbit, operators increasingly struggle to answer a basic question after separation: Is my satellite alive, and which one is it?
Today operators stitch together onboard telemetry, ground observations, and third-party tracking networks, and can still spend hours or days confirming a spacecraft's status after deployment. When communications are delayed, telemetry is unavailable, or multiple satellites occupy similar orbits, operators can struggle to quickly identify and locate their spacecraft.
Many of those satellites aren't lost forever. They're simply difficult to find.
AN INDEPENDENT SIGNAL FROM THE SATELLITE
Manifest's first product is an independent, vehicle-mounted optical beacon, a self-contained module that attaches to a spacecraft and broadcasts its identity, position, and status without relying on the host's RF links, GPS availability, or ground-station upgrades. Because it operates independently of the spacecraft's primary communications, it can keep reporting even when those systems cannot. The beacon creates a persistent data layer detectable by both ground-based and space-based tracking systems, including emerging optical tracking networks such as Stargaze.
The technology is scheduled to fly aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18 mission no earlier than October 2026, hosted by Blackwing Space, in a demonstration intended to validate its performance on orbit.
"What excites me about this round is that venture investors backed us from inside and outside the space industry. They see both the gap in orbital coordination and what it costs each operator," said Nick Orenstein, co-founder and CEO of Manifest Space. "This funding advances our designs and puts our first hardware in space less than 18 months after starting the company."
Manifest was founded by engineers whose flight heritage includes SpaceX Crew Dragon, NASA JPL missions, and ESA's BepiColombo program.
FROM BEACON TO COORDINATION LAYER
Beyond the upcoming demonstration, Manifest is developing a compact, independent transponder platform. The technology is designed to provide persistent identity, position awareness, and coordination throughout a satellite's operational life, creating the foundation for future visibility, anomaly-support, and traffic-coordination services.
BACKING THE COORDINATION LAYER
"The number of satellites reaching orbit has compounded at nearly 29% a year, more than tripling since 2020 to over 4,500 in 2025, and the industry still can't reliably say where each object is or whether it's alive," said Ivan Turchak, Associate at Hypernova Fund. "Ground radar and tracking constellations can only observe from the outside; they never hear from the spacecraft itself. Manifest fixes this. Their technologies report identity and position straight from the satellite, even when its primary communications drop and outside-in sensors fall short. We're the first institutional investor in this round because every operator is going to need that, and almost no one has built it."
The new capital will carry both the optical beacon and the transponder through critical design review and fund the optical beacon's demonstration flight aboard Transporter-18, with qualification and production to follow.
ABOUT MANIFEST SPACE
Manifest Space is building onboard space traffic awareness for every spacecraft, beginning with persistent spacecraft identity and extending toward a future in which spacecraft actively participate in operational coordination. The company is based in Los Angeles, California.
Media contact: Luke Frydenger Co-Founder & CMO, Manifest Space luke@manifest.space +1 323 646 0314 www.manifest.space