AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Momentus said Oct. 9 that it has won two NASA contracts to carry technology demonstration payloads on a future mission of its Vigoride in-space tug, with the awards valued at a combined $7.6 million. One payload will test in-space manufacturing concepts, and the other will evaluate an advanced propulsion system, the company said in a statement.

The payload selected to explore in-space manufacturing, known as COSMIC, was chosen as a winner of NASA’s Space Technology Payload Challenge under the TechLeap Prize. The prize program is designed to give early-stage companies funding, mentorship and the coveted opportunity to fly hardware in orbit. Momentus will integrate and fly COSMIC alongside the propulsion demonstrator, providing the platform, power and pointing needed for the experiments.

“These contracts validate our role as a commercial conduit for flight opportunities,” Momentus said. “Vigoride offers a cost-effective way for small teams to move from the lab to an operational orbit and gather the flight data that is critical to maturing new space technologies.” The company did not disclose a firm launch date for the mission.

Momentus’s Vigoride is a hosted payload and space-tug service that transports and operates third-party experiments and small satellites once in orbit. For NASA and other government sponsors, such services have become a pragmatic path to test technologies that could enable on-orbit manufacturing, modular assembly, satellite servicing and more agile station-keeping — capabilities seen as foundational for sustained operations in low Earth orbit and beyond.

Federal agencies have increasingly leaned on commercial providers for early-stage demonstrations. Momentus noted it has previously received contracts from NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force, to fly technology demonstration payloads aboard Vigoride missions. Those ties signal an appetite among U.S. agencies to diversify flight providers and to tap private-sector infrastructure for rapid iteration.

Experts say small-dollar contracts like these, while modest relative to large government programs, can have outsized impact by de-risking new concepts and generating flight heritage that attracts follow-on investment. “Getting a hardware demonstration into orbit is the make-or-break step for many new space technologies,” said a space-industry consultant familiar with TechLeap projects, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Flight data significantly shortens development time and improves investor and customer confidence.”

Still, observers note risks: integration challenges, schedule slips and the inherent complexity of bringing novel hardware to the space environment can delay the path from demonstration to operational use. Momentus has aimed to differentiate itself by offering both ride and in-orbit hosting services, which could smooth the transition from demonstration to deployed capability if the upcoming mission succeeds.

For now, NASA’s selection of COSMIC and the propulsion payload to fly on Vigoride is a practical step toward validating technologies that could reshape how satellites are built, maintained and moved in space. If the mission proceeds as planned, the experiments will join a growing portfolio of government-backed, commercially enabled demonstrations intended to hasten the next decade of space innovation.