Mantis Space’s logo. Photo: Mantis Space

Orbital energy startup Mantis Space emerged from stealth this morning with a $10 million seed round of funding, the company said on Thursday. Rule 1 Ventures and Montauk Capital led the round.

Mantis Spsvr said it aims to build a constellation that almost continuously generates and transmits solar power to satellites in the Earth’s shadow, allowing them to receive power around the clock. With orbital power infrastructure in place, satellites can remain in revenue-generating mission areas instead of chasing sunlight, it said.

“We are at the beginning of a space infrastructure supercycle,” Mantis Space co-founder CEO Eric Truitt commented. “Launch has scaled. Manufacturing has scaled. But performance in orbit is still constrained by physics. Every asset going up whether it’s a defense sensor, a broadband satellite, or an orbital compute node has the same power problem. We’re building the grid that makes all of it work.”

The funding will support hiring and go-to-market operations form the company’s new headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

A U.S. Navy veteran, Truitt previously co-founded satellite manufacturer Terran Orbital, which Lockheed Martin acquired, and its subsidiary PredaSAR. He recently assisted with BlueHalo’s sale to AeroVironment as a vice president of the former.

Co-founder, chairman, and Chief Strategy Officer Hugh Wyman Howard III, a retired rear admiral in the Navy, served in the military for 32 years, at one point as director of operations of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He currently sits on several corporate boards.

The third co-founder, COO Jeremy Scheerer was a program manager for foreign military sales at the US Air Force, led research and development programs in threat intelligence and analytics at Georgia Tech Research Institute, and served of vice president of defense systems at analytics firm MapLarge.

Chief Engineer John Sandusky has worked on optical engineering projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Accent Optical, and Sandia National Laboratories, where he spent 24 years, since 1997. Chief Optical Engineer Greg Brady has held lead roles working on Apple’s face ID system and the James Webb Space Telescope.