SpaceRyde – a government-supported launching company mentored by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield – filed an assignment of bankruptcy Friday (Feb. 10).
A brief listing on Deloitte’s website says SpaceRyde filed under section 49 of Canada’s Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. Deloitte will act as trustee of the bankruptcy estate, pending its confirmation by creditors at a first meeting that has not been assigned yet.
Further documentation is not yet available on the Deloitte website, such as the list of creditors or the amounts owed. Based on other filings on the website, that information should be available in the coming weeks or months.
SpaceRyde received substantial government support in recent years. Sustainable Development Technology Canada gave a $100,000 cleantech grant in December 2021, for example. At the time, SpaceRyde said the money would be used to continue developing rocket and launch vehicles for an expected flight in 2022. (The flight timing was pushed back, but that is common among rocket companies as there are numerous technology obstacles during development.)
In July 2020, the Canadian Space Agency awarded $500,000 to SpaceRyde to develop a lightweight rocket nozzle. The funding was part of the Space Technology Development Program Announcement of Opportunity 6 consisting of 10 non-repayable contributions totalling $4.5 million for eight companies. Incidentally, SpaceRyde successfully tested the engine for the rocket portion of their hybrid balloon rocket launch system on Nov. 3, 2021 – via livestream, no less – which showed substantial progress towards launch.
Other revenue streams included contracts. For example, in November 2022 SpaceRyde signed a multiple launch agreement (MLA) with ISILaunch Services (subsidiary of Netherlands-based company, ISISSPACE) for four commercial launches starting in 2024.
SpaceRyde’s co-founder and CEO, Sohrab Haghighat, did not respond to requests for comment on the bankruptcy assignment when asked by SpaceQ. An individual who until recently was public relations at SpaceRyde has a non-functioning email as well. LinkedIn records of individuals with SpaceRyde associations suggest that at least a few in middle management or senior management quietly marked themselves as former employees in February 2023.
One of those individuals was Negar Feher, chief revenue officer of SpaceRyde; Feher just joined four months ago in October 2022. Feher was on stage only two days before the assignment of bankruptcy was filed, at the SmallSat Symposium in Mountain View, Calif. On Feb. 8, according to the conference’s agenda, Feher spoke on “The Role of Smallsats in Earth Sciences” and her presence was documented on Twitter.
The week before, Feher was likely also active publicly, as she is listed as speaking at the International Space Convention on Feb. 4 on the topic “From Payloads to Commercial Spaceflight: Supporting the Increasing Launch Rates.”
SpaceRyde was founded in 2018 under the name Loonify Space. It got its first big boost in 2019 at the Rotman School of Management’s Creative Destruction Lab, which bills itself as a “seed-stage program for massively scalable, science and technology-based companies.” It was at CDL that SpaceRyde changed its name and worked extensively with Hadfield, who is one of the more prominent mentors in that program.
In 2019, as SpaceQ documented, SpaceRyde targeted stratospheric balloons as the ideal low-cost venue for them to launch rockets bearing small satellites. SpaceRyde would have borne a 20-meter, three-stage rocket called Ryder into the stratosphere.
Ryder, a “smart rocket” would have used location data to determine its best path to orbit and by late 2022, its first demonstration mission was expected in Q4 2024. That mission would have seen one rocket in LEO refuel another rocket launched by SpaceRyde to target the moon. The moon is a rich zone of opportunity due to extensive expected NASA and international activity in the region (as there are several private missions funded, about to launch or en route.)
Smaller and more powerful satellites make launching costs cheaper, although balloons move with some randomness. That makes airspace clearances difficult, and those clearances may be harder to secure given recent events. In the week of the bankruptcy assignment, the defence community in Canada and the United States was on alert due to uncleared balloon activity.
Three extremely high-altitude objects were shot down via fighter jet over these countries in early February over several days, after the authorities deemed them a threat to the airspace. At the time of writing, one object was a confirmed balloon from China widely believed by U.S. authorities to be for surveillance, despite China’s assurances it was a benign object gone astray. The other two objects have not yet been disclosed or may not be known, pending analysis by defence authorities.
SpaceRyde would have needed to account for this shift in the military environment, but at the same time, there was another big change in the Canadian launching business in late January: the government at last declared itself open for licencing domestic spaceport capabilities. Balloons were not discussed in the Jan. 20 announcement, so how this would have affected SpaceRyde is not quite clear. On the one hand, a more open launching industry might have created more opportunity for SpaceRyde. Conversely, rocket operators now have an easier time in getting payloads off the ground here, and SpaceRyde may have faced more competition.
SpaceRyde’s peak was perhaps in June 2022, when the company showcased a 25,000-square-foot rocket manufacturing facility in Concord with Hadfield attending the event. Numerous media attended and in the resulting reports, SpaceRyde said it had received $10 million in funding and had about 30 people.
The company subsequently attempted to perform engine testing in Warkworth, a community within the larger municipality of Trent Hills, roughly two hours east of Toronto. In September 2022, according to Trent Hills Now, mayor Bob Crate told his council he was about to seek a legal opinion on the allowable uses of SpaceRyde’s lease in the area.
Residents were unhappy with the noise, as hundreds of signatures on Change.org attested, but SpaceRyde officials argued in media reports that engine testing was allowed under an accessory use of the land.
By October, the newspaper said in another report, the municipality formally asked SpaceRyde to cease testing and said any future discussions should come through a formal planning application. That process requires consultation with the residents and a public policy framework making use of government documents, a provincial policy statement and consultations with several agencies, among other steps, the newspaper said.
Space launching remains a hard business. Even though the international industry is clearly ripe with opportunity due to rising launch rates and plummeting prices, space requires highly skilled individuals (who would command associated salaries) as well as an investment in hardware. There are also many companies that are competing for the launch business alongside SpaceRyde.
In such an innovative and crowded field, and especially with inflation and other market conditions fluctuating considerably in recent months, some space companies may fail. But the causes of SpaceRyde’s situation have not yet been disclosed publicly. That information will surely come out as the filings continue their process – which could take months at the least.