Inversion awarded $71M by SpaceWERX to develop the next generation of autonomous re-entry vehicles, enable precision delivery to any location on Earth

Austin Briggs (left), Co-Founder and CTO of Inversion and Justin Fiaschetti (right), Co-Founder and CEO of Inversion at Inversion's Torrance, California headquarters (Photo: Business Wire)TORRANCE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Inversion, founded in 2021 to build re-entry vehicles to deliver cargo anywhere on Earth in under one hour, announced today that Ray, the company’s technology test platform, will be launching on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-12 Rideshare mission, no earlier than October 2024.The purpose of Ray’s mission for Inversion is to test key technologies for the yet-to-be-announced next generation vehicle that Inversion is developing.“We have developed Ray at a record low cost, while simultaneously making investments into our next gen vehicle. Ray’s first mission is a major step on the path to making returning from space an everyday occurrence. This ethos of cost efficiency is core to accomplishing this mission,” said Justin Fiaschetti, Co-Founder and CEO of Inversion.Once in space, Ray will remain in orbit while the Inversion team conducts functional check out. Upon completion, Ray will be commanded to conduct its de-orbit burn using Inversion’s 8 lbf thrust bipropellant rocket engine, named CE-1. Ray will then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, 17800 mph. Ray will deploy its parachute, which Inversion has developed from scratch, to slow to a gentle 12.5 ft/s touchdown velocity and splash down off the coast of California.“We decided early on that Ray would be used to test technology for our next gen vehicle, which is why we’ve developed nearly every one of Ray’s subsystems in-house for both the capsule and the service module

Inversion Space is aptly named. The three-year-old startup’s primary concern is not getting things to space, but bringing them back — transforming the ultimate high ground into “a transportation layer for Earth.”The company’s plan — ultra-fast, on-demand deliveries to anywhere on Earth — sounds like pie in the sky, but it’s the sort of moonshot goal that could transform terrestrial cargo transportation. The aim is to send up fleets of earth-orbiting vehicles that will be able to shoot back to Earth at Mach speeds, slow with specially-made parachutes, and deliver cargo in minutes.Inversion has developed a pathfinder vehicle, called Ray, that’s a technical precursor to a larger platform that will debut in 2026. Ray will head to space this October, on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 ride share mission, paving the way for Inversion’s future plans on orbit (and back).Ray is small — about twice the diameter of a standard frisbee — and will spend anywhere from one and five weeks in space, depending on factors like weather and how the orbit aligns with the landing site, Inversion CEO Justin Fiaschetti explained in a recent interview.This first mission will have three phases: the initial on-orbit phase, where the spacecraft will power on, charge its batteries, and hopefully send telemetry to the ground. During the second phase, Ray will use its onboard propulsion system to slow down the vehicle so it starts losing altitude and reentering the atmosphere. The reentry capsule will separate from the satellite bus (both designed in-house), with the latter structure burning up.The third and final phase will see Ray slow down using a supersonic drogue parachute, from a reentry speed of Mach 1.8 to Mach 0.2