Overview
- Stoke Space, which completed an initial close of a Series E round Tuesday, said the roughly $1 billion will pay for production scale-up, test infrastructure and development of a second‑generation Nova Block 2.
- The company says its near-term vehicle, Nova Pathfinder, is scheduled for a first flight in early 2027 carrying an AstroForge spacecraft but has not yet flown to orbit and still needs integrated flight tests.
- Nova Block 2 is being developed for a 2029 debut and is designed to lift about 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit in reusable mode, roughly five times Pathfinder’s reusable lift.
- Stoke is pursuing a distinctive active cooling system that circulates liquid hydrogen through channels in the upper stage heat shield to manage reentry heating, a method tested on the ground but not yet flight‑proven.
- The capital will also support a larger Moses Lake test complex, payload processing and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, and Stoke’s Kent factory as it seeks to meet rising satellite constellation demand and compete with incumbents.