TransAstra
"Building In-Space Logistics"
Los Angeles space-logistics firm (Trans Astronautica Corp.) whose Mantis inflatable Capture Bag, tested on the ISS in 2025, targets debris and asteroid capture.
TransAstra is the brand of Trans Astronautica Corporation, a Los Angeles aerospace company developing technologies for in-space logistics, orbital debris removal, space domain awareness and asteroid resource utilization. It was founded by Dr. Joel Sercel, its CEO, who holds a PhD in space propulsion and plasma physics from Caltech; company releases give 2015 as the founding year, while Y Combinator, whose Summer 2021 batch the company joined, lists 2016. The leadership team also includes Chief Business Officer Alex Pilmer, EVP of Programs Nicole Shumaker, VP of Engineering Philip Wahl and Chief Engineer Thibaud Talon, and the board includes former NASA astronaut Stanley Love and defense space strategist Pete Garretson. The company organizes its work into four steps: detect, capture, move and process.
Capture is the robotics-relevant part of the business. The Mantis Capture Systems family uses inflatable structures to envelop and secure uncontrolled objects, from CubeSats and defunct satellites to spent rocket stages and small asteroids, as an alternative to rigid grapples. TransAstra says its laboratory testbed captured and detumbled a one-third-scale rocket body rotating on all three axes and brought it to a stationary state without rupturing the bag. The development history shown on its site runs from a first Capture Bag iteration in 2024 that tested the cinching mechanism, load capacity and stowed deployment, through material trade studies in 2025, to a flight unit in which a silver enclosure holds the gas-handling hardware and a black hexagonal module contains the bag. A 1-meter Mantis Capture Bag was delivered to the International Space Station in September 2025 and deployed in October 2025 in an airlock environment, demonstrating inflation and closure in microgravity vacuum. NASA's Civil Commercial Research and Products Program then awarded TransAstra a $2.5 million contract, matched by $2.5 million of private investment, to scale the bag from 1 to 10 meters in diameter, large enough to capture large spacecraft components or small asteroids. In 2026 the company designed a capture hand for soft capture of satellites with appendages such as solar panels and antennas. Jalopnik reports that TransAstra is developing Capture Bags in six sizes.
To move captured objects, TransAstra is developing the Worker Bee orbital transfer vehicle, powered by its patented Omnivore solar thermal propulsion system, which uses concentrated sunlight to heat almost any volatile liquid, such as water, as propellant. For detection, its Sutter telescope systems, including the modular Sutter TKO turnkey observatory, are deployed in a ground-based network to find faint objects in MEO, GEO and cislunar space for space domain awareness and asteroid prospecting. For processing, its SolarForge concept uses concentrated sunlight, microgravity and vacuum to extract propellants and building materials from asteroids and recycled debris; the company has demonstrated spallation of synthetic asteroid material with a 1-meter solar reflector.
Development, integration and testing take place at The Hive, a 7,000-square-foot facility with CNC machining, 3D printing, large vacuum chambers, optical benches and integration bays, where the company also built its DAQAstra data acquisition and control system. TransAstra lists NASA, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, the US Space Force, DARPA, AFRL and Y Combinator among its partners and backers.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
Mantis Capture Bag (1 m)
1-meter inflatable capture bag delivered to the ISS in Sept 2025 and deployed Oct 2025, demonstrating inflation and closure in microgravity vacuum.
10-meter Capture Bag
Flight-qualified 10 m inflatable bag being developed under a $2.5M NASA CCRPP award plus $2.5M private match to capture large debris and small asteroids.
Worker Bee orbital transfer vehicle
Commercial orbital transfer vehicle powered by patented Omnivore solar thermal propulsion, which can use water or almost any volatile liquid as propellant.
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Contact TransAstra
WEBSITE
https://www.transastra.comHEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2015
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
Early-Stage VC
Funding Total
-
Keywords
