COLORADO SPRINGS—LightRidge Solutions, a private equity portfolio, is building space-based assets that offer protection against on-orbit attacks, sensors that can detect the contrails of stealth aircraft, and other ground- and space-based assets.
ATL Partners formed this private equity portfolio in 2021 with two operating units. GEOST makes small, low-cost, capable assets that aim to change the economics of ground- and space-based sensors that conduct space situational awareness and protection. Ophir is the second unit, which uses lidar lasers for contrail detection.
LightRidge has multiple customers: the intelligence community, commercial space customers and the Space Development Agency (SDA). “We have sensors in LEO [low Earth orbit], we have sensors in GEO [geostationary Earth orbit], we have ground sensors and we have a contract for cislunar,” LightRidge CEO Bill Gattle said at the Space Symposium here.
