RYAN WESTERDAHL
CO-FOUNDER / CEO
TURION SPACE CORP.
WHY: Worked for eight years as dynamics engineer at SpaceX. Co-founded Turion in 2021 to clean up junk in space and mine asteroids for precious metals. Has more than 70 employees. As of December, has raised $26.5M when the value of its contracts with the government topped $50M. Investors in latest Series A financing include Veterans Ventures Capital, Forward Deployed VC, Aurelia Foundry, Y Combinator.
IN THE NEWS: Among a dozen companies selected in May by the U.S. Space Force to compete for spacecraft contracts under a $237M program. Space Force plans to make use of commercially developed spacecraft and industry partnerships “to accelerate the development of cutting-edge space technologies over the next decade.”
Turion already boasts a $1.9M U.S. Space Force contract to develop ways to clean up space debris, which now number an estimated 1M pieces. Turion in late 2024 secured a $32.6M contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command to develop three satellites for non-Earth imaging applications. These satellites will conduct rendezvous and proximity operations to perform satellite-to-satellite imagery collection—a capability that allows for detailed inspection of other objects in orbit.
IN HIS OWN WORDS: “We build and operate critical space infrastructure to unleash the potential of Earth orbit and accelerate our galactic manifest destiny.”
