Satellite developer and manufacturer York Space Systems on Wednesday said it has acquired Emergent Space Technologies, a small software company that develops software and guidance solutions for spacecraft.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Denver-based York said the acquisition strengthens its software expertise.
“We view the continued growth of our software capabilities as a critical step in expanding York’s offerings and accelerating our ability to execute for all our customers,” Dirk Wallinger, CEO of York, said in a statement. “This major acquisition ensures the right technology and resources are immediately available to deliver exceptional end-to-end mission solutions on time and at the fixed prices each of our customers expects.”
Charles Beames, York’s chairman, said that that satellite hardware is becoming commoditized and that advanced software capabilities will be a competitive differentiator.
“Incorporating Emergent’s capabilities into York’s existing space mission solutions now allows us to immediately deliver a broader range of capabilities, further enhancing mission design and continuing to support the spiral development model,” Beames said in a statement.
Emergent, which is based in Laurel, Md., bills itself as a technology and engineering services firm “focusing on advanced space missions such as autonomous clusters, formations and constellations of small spacecraft and cislunar and deep space exploration, awareness and security.” The company’s domain expertise includes guidance, navigation and control, ground and flight software development, high-fidelity modeling and simulation based on mission experience in low, geosynchronous and highly elliptical orbits, and positioning, navigation and timing.
Emergent has just over 90 employees and its leadership will remain with the company.
Emergent’s customers include U.S. defense agencies, including the Space Development Agency (SDA), the intelligence community and NASA. In late 2022, SDA awarded the company two Small Business Innovation Research contracts, one under the Evaluation and Engineering of Resilient Space Technology effort to develop digital engineering tools for modeling, simulation and analysis of the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA), and the other to design and develop a space mesh networking flight platform capability as a potential option for the Battlespace Management Command, Control, and Communications Modules that will be hosted on NDSA space vehicles.
SDA this spring launched eight data transmission satellites built by York that are part of the agency’s Transport Layer that will be part of a proliferated warfighter space architecture for beyond line of sight targeting and advanced missile detection and tracking. The company is also developing additional Transport Layer satellites for the agency.
Houlihan Lokey served as Emergent’s financial adviser on the deal.