Blackstar Orbital
Definitive (DA signed)Industrials · orbital spacecraft and defense systems manufacturing · United States
- What it is
- Blackstar Orbital Technologies Corporation is developing reusable orbital spacecraft designed to launch aboard existing rockets as conventional payloads, operate in low Earth orbit, return mission payloads to Earth, and land on a runway for recovery and reuse
- What it’s doing now
- Merging with Pono Capital Four (PONO) — definitive (da signed), announced Aug 6, 2026; expected close Q1 2027.
- What you should know
- The real share count puts the effective valuation 45% above the announced $380M.
The business, per its filings
SEC primaryBlackstar Orbital Technologies Corporation is developing reusable orbital spacecraft designed to launch aboard existing rockets as conventional payloads, operate in low Earth orbit, return mission payloads to Earth, and land on a runway for recovery and reuse. Its flagship SpaceDrone platform is intended to provide government and commercial customers with responsive, repeatable access to orbit and the ability to recover high-value payloads, technologies and materials from space. The company states it has been awarded approximately $1.9 million in cumulative U.S. government research and development funding, including awards through SpaceWERX, and has secured over $120 million in signed commercial letters of intent.
Source: 8-K, accession 0001213900-26-086293 · extraction confidence: high
What the company says about itself
Web research — not auditedBlackStar Orbital develops and operates the BX-100, a reusable autonomous space drone that delivers payloads to low Earth orbit, hosts them on-orbit, and returns them to a runway for rapid reuse. The company offers SpaceDrone for payload deployment and hosting, and SpaceBox for certified in-space product testing and validation.
- Markets:
- Research & R&D | Defense | Constellations
- Products:
- BX-100 | BX-100M | BX-100D | BX-100C | SpaceDrone | SpaceBox
- Customers:
- Starfighters Space
Source: https://www.blackstarorbital.com/ · captured Aug 21, 2026 · marketing claims are reported as claims, never merged into the filed figures above.
The deal it’s entering
Blackstar Orbital is merging with Pono Capital Four (PONO), a $120M SPAC currently marked Deal announced and trading at $10.03 against $10.00 in trust per share.
| Headline equity value | $380M |
| Effective valuation (all shares) | $551M+45% vs headline |
| Sponsor promote | 30% |
Structure per SEC accession(s) 0001213900-26-087845, 0001213900-26-086293. How to read these numbers: headline vs effective valuation · what a definitive agreement commits
What exactly is being valued, and at what
Was this deal done at an expensive or a cheap valuation?
SpacBrain’s read on the price
No multiple can be computed
We hold no revenue figure in US dollars for Blackstar Orbital, so there is nothing to divide the price by and no multiple can be struck. It is not recorded as pre-revenue either — this is a gap in our record, not a finding that the company has no sales. The deal values it at $551.4M regardless.
We have not extracted a revenue figure for this company from its filings yet. That is our gap, not a statement about the business.
Post-dilution equity (net debt unknown).
Not extracted from the filings yet.
Not computable — no revenue figure has been extracted from the filings yet.
$1 of their sales costs $8.39 on the open market. Median of 7 listed companies we judged a true comparable, which individually run from 2.11× to 196.45×. Their share prices are from 14 August 2026, not today.
What qualifies the figures above
- Struck on the post-dilution value of $551.4M, not the announced $380M — new shares handed to the sponsor, warrant holders and the PIPE are part of what public buyers are really paying.
- The target's cash and debt are not in the filings we have, so this is an equity value used as a stand-in for enterprise value.
- FLY, YSS, VOYG, KRMN, FJET have no revenue to divide by, so they are shown but left out of the peer median.
The listed companies it is measured against
| Ticker | Company | Mkt cap | EV / revenue | EV / EBITDA | Why it’s comparable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RDW | Redwire Corporation | $3.3B | 6.6x | — | Direct comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); small-cap ($1.5bn); shares orbital, spacecraft, orbit, payloads, earth, space with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 5.8x.more ▾less ▴ |
| MNTS | Momentus Inc. | $92M | 2.1x | — | Direct comp: Spacecraft Manufacturing; micro-cap ($7m); shares orbit, orbital, payloads, payload, space, government with the target's own description; no forward EV/Sales published — counted as a peer, excluded from the median.more ▾less ▴ |
| RKLB | Rocket Lab Corporation | $51.2B | 59.5x | — | Direct comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); large-cap ($37.9bn); shares spacecraft, launch, rockets, orbit, space, mission with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 45.6x.more ▾less ▴ |
| FLY | Firefly Aerospace Inc. | $3.6B | — | — | Direct comp: Spacecraft Manufacturing; mid-cap ($3.6bn); shares spacecraft, orbital, reusable, launch, orbit, space with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 8.5x.more ▾less ▴ |
| LUNR | Intuitive Machines, Inc. | $2.8B | 8.4x | — | Direct comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); mid-cap ($2.9bn); shares spacecraft, orbit, earth, payload, space, mission with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 6.0x.more ▾less ▴ |
| YSS | York Space Systems Inc | — | — | — | Direct comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); shares spacecraft, orbit, mission, space, government, low with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 2.3x.more ▾less ▴ |
| VOYG | Voyager Technologies, Inc. | $1.5B | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); small-cap ($1.5bn); shares orbit, space, earth, mission, technologies, government with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 9.6x.more ▾less ▴ |
| KRMN | Karman Holdings Inc | $9.7B | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); mid-cap ($9.7bn); shares launch, payload, spacecraft, space, existing, has with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 11.8x.more ▾less ▴ |
| FJET | Starfighters Space Inc | $510M | — | — | Operational comp: Aerospace & Defense (NEC); small-cap ($510m); shares rockets, launch, government, space, research, access with the target's own description; no forward EV/Sales published — counted as a peer, excluded from the median.more ▾less ▴ |
| ASTS | AST SpaceMobile, Inc. | $27.9B | 196.4x | — | Operational comp: Satellite Service Operators; large-cap ($27.2bn); shares orbit, earth, government, space, existing, low with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 169.0x.more ▾less ▴ |
| SATL | Satellogic Inc. | $890M | 27.9x | — | Operational comp: Satellite Service Operators; micro-cap ($254m); shares orbit, earth, launch, ability, high, space with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 18.8x.more ▾less ▴ |
| IRDM | Iridium Communications Inc | $5.3B | 7.8x | 16.3x | Operational comp: Satellite Service Operators; small-cap ($1.8bn); shares payloads, orbit, government, land, provide, over with the target's own description; forward EV/Sales 7.3x.more ▾less ▴ |
Which companies belong on this list is our judgement, and the sentence beside each one is the whole of our reasoning — disagree with it and the verdict above changes. Rows marked context only are shown because they are informative, but they are deliberately left out of the median. The multiples come from listed-company data priced Aug 14, 2026; a private target’s deal multiple is not audited the way theirs are.
Common questions
Is Blackstar Orbital going public?
Blackstar Orbital has a signed merger with the SPAC Pono Capital Four (PONO), announced Aug 6, 2026. Deal status: Definitive (DA signed).
What is Blackstar Orbital's SPAC deal valuation?
The announced headline equity value is $380M, but counting every share class — founder promote, PIPE and public shares — the effective valuation is $551M, 45% above the headline.
Was Blackstar Orbital bought at an expensive or a cheap valuation?
We hold no revenue figure in US dollars for Blackstar Orbital, so there is nothing to divide the price by and no multiple can be struck. It is not recorded as pre-revenue either — this is a gap in our record, not a finding that the company has no sales. The deal values it at $551.4M regardless.
Does Blackstar Orbital have revenue?
The filings we've parsed don't state a usable revenue figure yet; this profile is updated as new documents land.
Educational content, not investment advice.
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