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Capella Space
Capella Space is an American space company with satellite and unclassified SAR data and missions solutions for government and commercial use. Its Earth observation satellites are equipped with synthetic-aperture radar sensors that can collect imagery through clouds and at night.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the firm has offices in Washington, D.C., and Louisville, Colorado.
The company was founded in 2016 by Payam Banazadeh, a former engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, and William Walter Woods. As of January 2024, the company had more than 200 employees and raised venture capital from investors such as Canaan Partners, Data Collective, Pear VC and Spark Capital.
Capella designs, manufactures and operates its fleet of SAR satellites to provide high-resolution, all-weather imagery to the U.S. government and commercial customers. Sequoia, the first-generation satellite, launched in August 2020. Six second-generation Whitney satellites were launched between January 2021 and January 2022 on SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit.
In 2023, Capella began launching its third-generation, Acadia satellites. Capella is launch agnostic, partnering with diverse launch providers to place its satellites in a variety of orbits, both mid-inclination and sun-synchronous.
Capella Space has raised about $250 million in total equity and debt financing since its founding in 2016. In May 2025, IonQ, a quantum computing startup, announced their intent to purchase Capella Space in an all stocks transaction. The acquisition was completed in July 2025.
In 2019, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) awarded Capella a contract to study the integration of Capella's commercial radar imagery with the NRO's government-owned surveillance satellites. The U.S. Air Force awarded Capella a contract in November 2019 to incorporate the company's imagery into the Air Force's virtual reality software. Capella also has a contract with the Navy, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), earlier in 2020 to allow researchers from the U.S. government's intelligence community to assist Capella. An inter-satellite link with Inmarsat's network of geostationary communications satellites enables real-time tasking of Capella's satellites. Customers can use a self-service electronic portal and API to task a Capella satellite for a radar image. In 2021, Capella received a $3 million research contract in support of the Space Development Agency's National Defense Space Architecture. Capella was chosen through a broad agency announcement.
In 2023, Capella was awarded a Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Services (PLEO) contract through the U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC) to support SSC and the U.S. Space Force with access to SAR imagery for key missions. Capella was also awarded two Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) contracts with NASA to determine the suitability of Capella's data to advance NASA's Earth science missions: a multi-year blanket purchase agreement and a n indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, multiple-award contract. This enables NASA research evaluators from across the country with easy access to Capella's high-resolution data archive and automated tasking capabilities as they find novel new ways to monitor the Earth and the environment.
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Capella Space
Capella Space is an American space company with satellite and unclassified SAR data and missions solutions for government and commercial use. Its Earth observation satellites are equipped with synthetic-aperture radar sensors that can collect imagery through clouds and at night.
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the firm has offices in Washington, D.C., and Louisville, Colorado.
The company was founded in 2016 by Payam Banazadeh, a former engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, and William Walter Woods. As of January 2024, the company had more than 200 employees and raised venture capital from investors such as Canaan Partners, Data Collective, Pear VC and Spark Capital.
Capella designs, manufactures and operates its fleet of SAR satellites to provide high-resolution, all-weather imagery to the U.S. government and commercial customers. Sequoia, the first-generation satellite, launched in August 2020. Six second-generation Whitney satellites were launched between January 2021 and January 2022 on SpaceX Transporter rideshare missions into a polar Sun-synchronous orbit.
In 2023, Capella began launching its third-generation, Acadia satellites. Capella is launch agnostic, partnering with diverse launch providers to place its satellites in a variety of orbits, both mid-inclination and sun-synchronous.
Capella Space has raised about $250 million in total equity and debt financing since its founding in 2016. In May 2025, IonQ, a quantum computing startup, announced their intent to purchase Capella Space in an all stocks transaction. The acquisition was completed in July 2025.
In 2019, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) awarded Capella a contract to study the integration of Capella's commercial radar imagery with the NRO's government-owned surveillance satellites. The U.S. Air Force awarded Capella a contract in November 2019 to incorporate the company's imagery into the Air Force's virtual reality software. Capella also has a contract with the Navy, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), earlier in 2020 to allow researchers from the U.S. government's intelligence community to assist Capella. An inter-satellite link with Inmarsat's network of geostationary communications satellites enables real-time tasking of Capella's satellites. Customers can use a self-service electronic portal and API to task a Capella satellite for a radar image. In 2021, Capella received a $3 million research contract in support of the Space Development Agency's National Defense Space Architecture. Capella was chosen through a broad agency announcement.
In 2023, Capella was awarded a Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Services (PLEO) contract through the U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC) to support SSC and the U.S. Space Force with access to SAR imagery for key missions. Capella was also awarded two Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) contracts with NASA to determine the suitability of Capella's data to advance NASA's Earth science missions: a multi-year blanket purchase agreement and a n indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, multiple-award contract. This enables NASA research evaluators from across the country with easy access to Capella's high-resolution data archive and automated tasking capabilities as they find novel new ways to monitor the Earth and the environment.