Basalt Space worked 22 hours a day in March to assemble its first satellite for a launch deadline as the San Francisco startup pushes to build customer-taskable constellations run by AI. [1]
The company operates from three adjacent apartments in Lower Nob Hill that serve as both home and office, with a staff made up entirely of people in their 20s. CEO Max Bhatti said the pace reflected the pressure of what he called the third and largest wave of satellite development in the U.S., adding: "It makes 996 look like a vacation." [1]
Basalt wants to sell clients their own clusters of 5 to 15 satellites and let them task the network directly, in a model Bhatti compared to cloud computing access. "What's the most fundamental thing that we could change about the aerospace industry? ... the end user should just be able to directly task a constellation, not even just one satellite," he said. [1]
The company says the service would widen reliable and secure access to satellite imaging, navigation and communications beyond governments and traditional providers. It also plans to run the spacecraft autonomously with AI rather than human operators, a core part of the business model that has yet to be proven. [1]
Basalt's progress has been helped by lower satellite manufacturing and launch costs over the past five years, which have made the startup easier to build. The company's next step is to keep developing and launching satellites as it works toward that autonomous constellation model. [1]
