Image by Redwire

Redwire Corp. on Wednesday evening said it has agreed to acquire Hera Systems in a deal that will add additional spacecraft options to its portfolio, including satellites for Geostationary Orbit (GEO).

Redwire raised its top-line outlook for 2024 by $10 million to $310 million based on Hera’s expected contribution to sales this year.

Hera is based in San Jose, Calif., and is under contract to Orion Space Solutions to develop three satellites for the U.S. Space Force’s Tetra-5 mission to demonstrate autonomous rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking operations for on-orbit refueling in GEO.

Redwire said that Hera is developing a new class of spacecraft to support national security missions in contested space and is building in cyber-secure communications, resilient power systems, “highly accurate pointing, extensive maneuverability, and massive on-board computing power supporting mission- and payload-specific machine learning.”

Hera is also developing spacecraft platforms for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and Very LEO. Redwire is also developing VLEO platforms, having recently won a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to demonstrate a VLEO spacecraft for the Otter program. Redwire is also suppling antennas for the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer LEO satellite communications program.

“Hera Systems’ platform is highly complementary with Redwire’s suite of national security space solutions,” Peter Cannito, Redwire’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “Similar to our focus on VLEO platforms, we see increasing opportunities to unlock and deliver new solutions in MEO, GEO and other domains to support the warfighter and address critical needs in national security space. This transaction fits squarely within our growth strategy by adding significant capabilities to move up the value chain in select areas of emerging hybrid architectures.”

Redwire offers an array of space products and capabilities including engineering services, modeling and simulation, solar arrays, guidance and navigation components, pharmaceutical-related technologies, agriculture, and more.

This story was first published by Defense Daily