WASHINGTON — Satellite manufacturing startup Apex has developed a version of its Aries bus intended for geostationary orbit missions.
The Los Angeles-based company announced Aug. 15 it is now selling GEO Aries, a version of its Aries small satellite bus first flown earlier this year to low Earth orbit adapted for GEO applications.
Ian Cinnamon, chief executive of Apex, said in an interview that the company has sold nearly a dozen Aries spacecraft to date, and in that process has been approached by customers interested in using the platform for GEO missions. Those missions, he said, ranged from space domain awareness to highly focused communications applications.
“We’re seeing a ton of demand from both the commercial and government sides,” he said. “So, what we wanted to do was take as much as we could from the Aries vehicle and create GEO Aries.”
The 175-kilogram GEO Aries features modifications to communications, attitude control and other systems to operate in geostationary orbit. It can carry payloads of up to 120 kilograms and features up to 800 meters per second of delta-v, or change in velocity. The spacecraft has a five-year lifespan and is compatible with GEO rideshare options as well as orbital transfer vehicles like Impulse Space’s Helios and Blue Origin’s Blue Ring.
Apex has sold the first GEO Aries to an undisclosed government customer for delivery in mid-2026 and launch by the end of 2026. The company is offering GEO Aries for $13.5 million.
The GEO Aries will be built on the same production line as the low Earth orbit version at its Factory One facility it is moving into in Los Angeles. That factory will also be used to build larger Nova and Comet buses the company plans to develop. Those larger buses may eventually have GEO versions as well, Cinnamon said.
The company raised $95 million in a Series B round in June to scale up production of Aries and develop the larger bus models. Apex said at the time it was seeing strong interest from both commercial and government customers for its Aries buses.
He said demand for the LEO version of Aries remains much higher than a GEO version, by about a factor of ten. However, the higher price of the GEO version means the difference in dollar value is significantly smaller, although still favoring LEO.
Cinnamon said the company has been approached by prospective customers interested in using Aries for cislunar or deep-space missions. “I think that cislunar and deep space are incredible opportunities in terms of the kind of science pushing it forward, but I am not yet convinced that there’s a massive commercial market for those yet,” he said.
Apex will remain focused for now on LEO and GEO missions, where the company sees the largest demand. He said Apex is willing to sell a GEO Aries to customers interested in cislunar or deep-space missions and have them do the modifications needed for those missions. “Maybe down the line we’ll do that.”
