LeoLabs is a leading commercial provider of Space Domain Awareness (SDA) and Space Traffic Management (STM) services. The company operates a global network of phased array radars to track objects in low Earth orbit (LEO), including satellites and space debris, down to 2cm in diameter. LeoLabs provides data and analytics to satellite operators, commercial enterprises, and government agencies like the U.S. Space Force and the European Space Agency (ESA) for collision avoidance, mission risk assessment, and space situational awareness. Their services support safe and sustainable operations in space, enabling customers to monitor and respond to threats in an increasingly congested orbital environment.
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LeoLabs intends to build out multiple radar sites concurrently beginning in 2021.
LeoLabs closed a $65,000,000 Series B financing round jointly led by Insight Partners and Velvet Sea Ventures.
LeoLabs intends to create a global infrastructure that tracks everything from 2-centimeter debris to spent rocket stages to support next-generation space operations and space sustainability.
LeoLabs originally planned to establish phased-array radars at six sites.
LeoLabs will shift from building a single radar at a time to building multiple radars concurrently.
LeoLabs will expand its staff to hire software and data-science experts to monitor increased activity in low Earth orbit.
LeoLabs raised $65,000,000 in a Series B financing round on 2021-06-03 to accelerate deployment of its global radar network and expand space situational awareness services.
The Series B round brings LeoLabs’ total funding to more than $100,000,000 and the company intends to deploy more than six radars.
LeoLabs estimates there are about 250,000 objects with diameters between 2 and 0.1 m that are large enough to cause damage but too small to be tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network.
LeoLabs’ most recent S-band radars deployed in New Zealand in 2019 and Costa Rica in 2021 are designed to track objects as small as 0.02 m in diameter.
LeoLabs offers a collision avoidance service and tracks satellites deployed on rideshare missions such as SpaceX’s Transporter-1 mission in January that carried 143 payloads.
LeoLabs was tracking about 14,000 objects in low Earth orbit that were 0.1 m across and larger as of early 2020.
About 1,700 of the objects LeoLabs tracked in low Earth orbit as of early 2020 were functional satellites and the remainder were debris.
LeoLabs announced on 2021-04-22 that two S-band radars in Costa Rica have begun tracking objects in low Earth orbit and delivering data to customers.
The Costa Rica Space Radar is a phased-array radar built by LeoLabs.
LeoLabs was founded in 2015 to map spacecraft and debris in low Earth orbit.
LeoLabs' initial radars were designed to pinpoint objects as small as 0.1 m.
LeoLabs gathers data in Alaska with the Poker Flats radar operated by SRI International on behalf of the National Science Foundation.
LeoLabs operates a UHF radar in Texas.
LeoLabs operates two S-band radars on a single site in Costa Rica to detect and track small space objects, similar to its configuration in New Zealand.