Lux Aeterna

Delphi is a satellite bus of roughly 200 kilograms built around a rigid conical heat shield, and the point of it is that the heat shield is also the primary structure. The bus folds up behind it, the solar arrays retract, and the whole vehicle comes back through the atmosphere under a parachute to be recovered and flown again. Payload is about a quarter of vehicle mass on the first article, with a production version aimed at 25 to 40 per cent.

Brian Taylor worked on satellites at Starlink, Kuiper and Loft Orbital, and founded the company on an asymmetry: launch became reusable and the payload did not. Everything sent up is still written off. If a bus could survive reentry on its own structure rather than carrying a separate capsule inside it, the customers who need hardware back, in-space manufacturing, short experiments, recoverable defence payloads, would not each have to build a return vehicle of their own.

Very little of it exists yet. When the company left stealth in June 2025 the reporting noted that what existed was renderings, and a year on the physical evidence is arc-jet testing of heat shield coupons, with a structural prototype due for ground testing through 2026 and a critical design review still to come. First flight is targeted for early 2027, and the reuse the company is named for would come on the flight after that. Its government agreements bring in less than they suggest: the two research agreements typically move no money, and the NASA agreement is reimbursable, meaning Lux Aeterna pays NASA for access rather than the reverse. Delphi-1's payload capacity is described as sold out, though no customer has been named, and about $14 million has been raised against a vehicle programme.