One small step…
Muon Space: Facing Climate Change Head On
Jonny Dyer, CEO MuonSpace
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
- M. Skłodowska Curie
Today, I am extremely excited to share what we have been building for the last nine months — Muon Space. We have closed a $10M Series Seed financing round led by Costanoa Ventures and including Space Capital, CongruentVC, Ubiquity Ventures, South Park Commons, ClimacticVC, and our friends and family.
With intensifying cyclones, historic droughts, and explosive wildfires, every day we are confronted by more examples of the rapidly escalating impacts of climate change.
Our team consists of friends and colleagues who share a strongly-held vision for a world in which humanity has moved beyond Climate uncertainty, inaction, and vulnerability and has, instead, confidently taken control of its destiny.
As inhabitants of Earth, we are deeply passionate about facing these challenges head-on. As engineers and scientists, we see a clear opportunity to realize the promise of New Space to revolutionize our visibility into Earth’s Systems. As people, we are all at a place in our lives where we can’t imagine a better field to dedicate our time and energy to.
Muon seeks to fundamentally transform humanity’s ability to address climate change and its impacts by deploying the world’s most powerful scientific remote sensing satellite constellations. Our data will empower society to better monitor climate change, resolve processes poorly represented in current models and ultimately revolutionize Earth Systems prediction.
There are rare moments in life when the stars align — moments where there is a confluence of people, passion, and opportunity that fit together perfectly. Dan, Reuben, and I spent the last several years deeply involved with the Environmental Defense Fund’s MethaneSat Project. MethaneSat’s mission is to drive significant reductions in global methane emission by combining rigorous science with New Space approaches. The vision and execution of the teams at EDF and Harvard have inspired us to ask ourselves — how might we can catalyze and scale additional important climate-focused datasets like those from MethaneSat?
At the same time, conversations with old Skybox friends and colleagues Pascal and Paul centered around the still-unmet promise of New Space to deliver reliable, modular space systems that can be scaled quickly and efficiently. We were frustrated to see how little progress has been made in the industry since we designed SkySat-1 back in 2010.
A eureka moment hit as we came to the realization that these conversations are two sides of the same coin. By combining world-class Science with an operationally robust, reliable, and efficient Systems approach we could help change the game in attacking big problems like Climate Change. The final piece fell into place early this year when we connected with our Series Seed venture partners. We were delighted to find investors so well aligned with our vision to simultaneously drive real impact and build an amazing business.
Creating Muon feels like one of those rare, stars-aligned moments.
Where we are going
Throughout our careers, we have delivered some of the most audacious and challenging space missions in the world. As JPL’s Chief Scientist, Dan led the charge in revolutionizing human understanding of other planets through a sustained campaign of successful interplanetary missions. Pascal, Paul, and I pioneered the development of high-performance, low earth orbit constellations at Skybox, inspiring the explosion in New Space missions we are in the midst of. And Reuben led the development of some of the country’s most impactful Earth Science missions in his time at Ball Aerospace.
The platform we are now building will form the foundation of the most capable geophysical remote sensing system ever deployed.
Looking forward, we are excited to leverage our cumulative experiences and to build and grow beyond them. We have already added nine more amazing team members to our effort — people I am truly humbled to be surrounded by.
Join Us!
Today we are partnering with like-minded organizations and institutions to develop constellations that will turbocharge their missions and begin moving towards the future we envision.
Partnerships are key. We fundamentally believe that collaboration, not competition will enable us to face down the massive challenges of Climate Change. And while the challenges are great, so too are the opportunities.
If you’re ready to join a world-class team that will leverage your skills towards an amazing mission: reach out to us!
If you’re ready to take your current organization to the next level: partner with us on solutions that will supercharge your mission and leave a lasting positive impact.
We are ecstatic for the road ahead — we have the opportunity to fundamentally impact how the world addresses climate change and I can’t imagine a more invigorating mission!
