Kapta Space, a space tech startup, announced that it came out of stealth mode and has raised a $5 million seed funding round to support the development of its advanced spaceborne electronically-steered, radar-based imaging technology.
The round was led by MetaVC Partners with participation from Entrada Ventures and Blue Collective.
The space tech startup plans to use the fresh funds to accelerate on-orbit demonstrations.
Founded by Milton Perque (formerly of Echodyne) and Adam Bily (formerly of Apple and Astranis) in 2023, Kapta Space, based in Seattle is a developer and operator of spaceborne radar technology that provides low-cost, advanced, electronically steered array sensors.
By employing a technique called Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Kapta creates high-resolution imagery and analytics from space in near real-time, addressing the limitations of high costs and small area coverage, and providing critical data for a variety of applications. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionize industries such as defense, intelligence, and commercial earth observation.
Kapta Space CEO and co-founder Milton Perque suggested that their technology transcends just persistent EO imagery and analytics. “Our tech has much broader implications than just SAR,” says Perque. “What we see is more of an advanced, multi-mission Spaceborne radar sensor that would enable many of the critical defense missions that don’t exist at scale, like GMTI (or Ground Moving Target Indication; missions of tracking slow moving ground targets from space). That’s not possible with a low-cost, mechanically pointed system. To enable these critical missions, radar sensors are required to be sophisticated, yet cost-efficient. This is incredibly challenging, and it has never existed in space at scale.”