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Building and Maintaining Momentum as Spaceflight Prepares to Execute an Industry First

Our client Spaceflight Inc. is no stranger to executing industry firsts. In December 2018, the company launched the largest number of satellites from a U.S.-based launch vehicle, and in Feb. 2019, the company launched the first privately funded lunar lander on the first-ever rideshare mission to Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).

In June of 2021, Spaceflight executed another industry first by launching the first-ever electric propulsion orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-2 mission. Spaceflight’s SXRS-5 mission was also the first time the company had launched two Sherpa vehicles, Sherpa-FX2 and Sherpa-LTE1, from a single mission. This important milestone not only demonstrated the company’s leadership in the industry, but its commitment to innovation and creating tools and services that enable their customers to get their satellites to the orbit they need on their timeline.

We worked closely with Spaceflight’s marketing team to craft a plan that would create excitement about the launch in the weeks leading up to takeoff.

First, we considered the compelling elements of this story. Then we strategized three key outreach campaigns as well as when to share them publicly and how to offer them to journalists in a strategic way.

We started our campaign by introducing the details of Spaceflight’s SXRS-5 mission in a press release. This included information about the number of payloads onboard, the customers flying, what Sherpa vehicles would carry satellites and which had propulsion units.

Next, we knew the hardware Spaceflight had constructed, its two Sherpa vehicles, would offer a unique visual story. We worked closely with the team to offer behind-the-scenes tours of Spaceflight’s integration facilities so journalists could get a close-up look at the hardware, technology and integration process.

Finally, we wanted to highlight Spaceflight’s engineering prowess and the unique, modular design of its Sherpa vehicles. To do this, we crafted a press release that broke down the Sherpa vehicles from a technical standpoint and described their versatility, the subsystems used to construct customized vehicles and the benefits that provides to customers.

Once we had these three key elements in place, we worked with the marketing team to brainstorm other ideas and mediums to build buzz and share interesting information about the mission. This included targeted outreach to industry podcasts, sharing customer missions through blogs posted on Spaceflight’s website and shared on social media, and finally a series of videos in which the mission and Sherpa vehicles were described in “bite-size” pieces for our audiences.

The series of campaigns have been a strong success, leading to eight media briefings, six customer stories and the list of coverage below.

We continue to be impressed by the Spaceflight team’s ability to develop and execute ground-breaking missions. Congratulations!