Warpspace

Warpspace has spent a decade on a simple observation: Earth observation satellites mostly wait. A satellite in low orbit passes its ground station a few times a day, so imagery sits on board for minutes or hours before anyone sees it. WarpHub InterSat, the product, is three relay satellites in medium orbit that would take that data off by laser crosslink and forward it almost immediately, with ReOrbit building the bus and Mynaric the optical terminals.

The company spun out of the University of Tsukuba's CubeSat program in 2016, and its one flight so far came early: WARP-01, a single-unit CubeSat deployed from the ISS in 2021, which validated home-built electronics and carried, as its paying payload, commemorative wedding plaques. It burned up the following year.

No relay satellite has flown. First-launch dates of 2023 and 2025 passed, a 2027 full-constellation date has quietly disappeared from company material, and the founding-era chief executive has been replaced. The newest money, a government program worth up to three billion yen through 2028 plus a 2026 funding round, is aimed at optical modems and link simulators rather than the constellation itself, a narrowing the company does not describe as one. The market moved while the satellites did not: the US Space Development Agency is buying laser-linked relay at scale, Kepler is building a commercial network in low orbit, and ESA's HydRON program advances the same idea in Europe.