Capella Space

Capella built the first American commercial radar satellites. Its spacecraft carry synthetic aperture radar, which images regardless of light or weather, and the Acadia generation delivers imagery sharp enough to count aircraft on a ramp at night. Denali, a pathfinder, flew in 2018; Sequoia, the first operational satellite, followed in 2020, and a fleet grew from there, sold mostly to defence and intelligence customers.

The company was founded in 2016, when commercial radar imaging barely existed and the assumption was that only governments could afford it. Capella's bet was that a small satellite with a deployable antenna could do a useful fraction of what a tonne-class radar satellite does, at a price a constellation could be built on.

Two things reshaped it. In 2023 its satellites began falling out of orbit faster than designed, solar activity thickening the upper atmosphere and shortening fleet life. And in 2025 it was acquired, in a way nobody predicted: IonQ, a quantum computing company, bought Capella for its satellite platform and licences, as the space segment of a planned quantum-secure communications network. The radar imagery business continues, but it now serves a parent whose ambitions are about keys, not pictures.