News

Aerospace and Defense Insights | SPAC transactions update: Are space and satellite companies still good candidates?

11 January 2022

Through Aerospace and Defense Insights, we share with you the top legal and political issues affecting the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry. Our A&D industry team monitors the latest developments to help our clients stay in front of issues before they become problems, and seize opportunities in a timely manner.

Since late 2019, space- and satellite-based companies and other companies in the aerospace and defense sector have been the focus of interest from special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs). Similarly, SPACs have been looked at by many startup space- and satellite-based companies as attractive vehicles for access to the public equity markets after their original venture capital rounds of funding. SPACs may provide an effective vehicle for going public and accessing the public capital market, as well as providing funds to help bring these space and satellite companies into commercial operation.

We saw the first recent space SPAC transaction in October 2019, when Virgin Galactic merged with Social Capital Hedosophia, a SPAC created by venture firm Social Capital. One year later, in-space transportation company Momentus announced its planned merger with Stable Road Acquisition Corp., a SPAC created by venture fund Stable Road Capital, followed by the announcement of New Providence Acquisition Corp.’s SPAC merger with satellite broadband specialist AST & Science. A number of space-related SPACs have followed, including Astra, Planet, Satellogic, Virgin Orbit, and Terran Orbital – in all, at least 13 space-related SPAC mergers announced through early Q4 2021.

Authored by Adam Brown, John Duke, Steven Kaufman, Michael Mason, Stephen Propst, and Randy Segal.