Made in Colorado (Winter 2023): Capella Space’s High-Resolution Satellites

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between. Today, we’re highlighting Autonomous Tent Co, the world’s first movable five-star hotel.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

Capella Space

Aerospace & Aircraft

Louisville, Colorado

Website: www.capellaspace.com

While Capella Space is headquartered in San Francisco, the company planted its manufacturing flag in Boulder County within a year of its founding in 2016.

The first company in the U.S. to commercialize synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Capella launched its first prototype in 2018. That was followed in 2020 by Capella-2, a satellite capable of producing the world’s highest-resolution commercial SAR imagery, primarily for applications in defense and disaster response.

It’s all about seeing the 75 percent of the planet that’s under the dark of night or cover of clouds or smoke at any given time. “We design, build and operate our own satellites, and those satellites can image the Earth through rain, smoke, clouds, daytime, nighttime,” says Mack Koepke, Capella’s VP of global sales and marketing. “Our satellite systems send a radio signal to Earth, and that radio signal bounces back from Earth to our satellite system. Depending on how that radio signal interacts with what it touches on Earth, you start to gain a picture of what is going on, on Earth.”

There’s a reason the startup immediately looked to establish manufacturing in Colorado. “It was such a rich pool of talent that we frankly just couldn’t pass up,” Koepke says. “We really wanted to ensure that we had a footprint here in Colorado to leverage the excellent workforce that comes out of places like the University of Colorado, as well as some of the legacy aerospace companies that we have, like Ball Aerospace, Lockheed and others.”

The company, which has raised more than $200 million in venture capital to date, has expanded its Colorado facility twice and now occupies a 32,000-square-foot space in Louisville with about 50 employees.

“This larger facility allows us to actually increase the throughput and volume of satellites that we manufacture,” Koepke says. “With this newer facility, we’re actually going to be able to build at least one a month.” With a dozen satellites in orbit as of late 2023, Capella could double its constellation in a year at that rate.

Koepke says Capella eschews slow and methodical protocol in favor of a nimbler design and manufacturing model. “That allows us to take a clean sheet of paper, design a satellite system, and go all the way to production and actually build one of those systems in a really short amount of time,” he explains. “For us, a clean sheet to an operational satellite system can be 12 to 18 months, whereas on a legacy system, that might be on a timeline of seven to 10 years.”

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].