Vector Launch

aid: vector-launch
name: Vector Launch
description: 'Vector Launch, Inc. (originally Vector Space Systems) was an American small-launch and space software company
  founded in February 2016 in Tucson, Arizona by Jim Cantrell — an early SpaceX executive — with John Garvey, Shaun Coleman,
  Ken Sunshine and Eric Besnard. It acquired Garvey Spacecraft in July 2016 and developed two LOX/propylene micro-launch vehicles,
  the Vector-R and the larger Vector-H, aimed at a high-cadence smallsat launch market, alongside GalacticSky, a San Jose
  based software-defined-satellite platform that produced more than forty patents and was marketed in 2016 with a promised
  suite of satellite SDKs, APIs and a satellite-optimised Linux distribution called GalacticOS. Those developer surfaces were
  announced but never shipped publicly: Vector operated no developer portal, published no OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, GraphQL SDL or
  Postman collection, ran no public GitHub organisation, and distributed no client SDK to any package registry. The company
  raised roughly $22M disclosed (a $1M angel round from Shaun Coleman, then $21M in June 2017 from Sequoia Capital, Shasta
  Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners), flew suborbital prototypes from Mojave and Spaceport Camden, and won a $3.4M
  U.S. Air Force ASLON-45 mission in August 2019 that was cancelled days later on solvency grounds. Sequoia withdrew support
  in August 2019, Cantrell departed, operations halted, and Vector filed Chapter 11 in Delaware on 13 December 2019; Lockheed
  Martin took the GalacticSky assets by default for $4.25M when no qualified competing bid appeared, and a separate bidder
  took the launch-vehicle assets. A relaunched entity under Robert Spalding re-emerged on 29 October 2020, shareholders voted
  a wind-down in January 2021, and the residual business was finally absorbed on 26 February 2026 when Phantom Space — Jim
  Cantrell''s later company — acquired Vector''s remaining assets, engineering data, tooling and intellectual property to
  accelerate its Daytona launch vehicle. Nothing of Vector''s own web presence survives: vector-launch.com is a dormant GoDaddy-registered
  holding domain that fails TLS name validation and returns 404 on every path, and the earlier vectorspacesystems.com brand
  domain lapsed and now redirects off-domain to an unrelated gambling site. This profile is retained as a historical record;
  there is no API surface to enrich.'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/vector-launch/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-harvest-source-url: https://forgeglobal.com/vector-launch_stock/
x-type: company
x-source: harvest:secondary-market
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: defunct-no-api-surface
x-status: defunct
x-founded: '2016-02-18'
x-bankruptcy-date: '2019-12-13'
x-shutdown-note: Halted operations August 2019 after Sequoia Capital withdrew support; filed Chapter 11 in the District of
  Delaware on 13 December 2019. GalacticSky sold to Lockheed Martin; launch-vehicle assets sold separately. A relaunched entity
  re-emerged 29 October 2020 and its shareholders voted a wind-down on 11 January 2021.
x-acquired-by: Phantom Space
x-acquisition-date: '2026-02-26'
x-acquisition-note: Phantom Space (phantomspace.com), founded by Vector's original CEO Jim Cantrell, acquired Vector Launch's
  remaining assets and intellectual property on 26 February 2026 in an undisclosed eight-figure deal funded by a previously
  unannounced Series B, stating that ~80% of the acquired assets accelerate its Daytona launch vehicle. Phantom Space is not
  currently a separate record in this network; it is a harvest lead, not a redirect target for this profile.
x-domain-status: dormant
x-domain-note: 'vector-launch.com remains registered through 2027-02-18 behind Domains By Proxy at GoDaddy but serves nothing:
  HTTPS fails certificate name validation (curl error 60) and plain HTTP answers 404 on every path including /, /robots.txt
  and all /.well-known/* locations. The predecessor brand domain vectorspacesystems.com has lapsed and been re-registered
  by an unrelated party — it now 302s to https://www.dolar138.com/, an Indonesian gambling site — so it is deliberately NOT
  wired as a Website pointer. galacticsky.com matches the GalacticSky product name but is an unrelated third-party site and
  is not Vector''s. See well-known/vector-launch-well-known.yml.'
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — company is defunct and shipped no callable surface
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-09-02'
  method: derived
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-09-02'
modified: '2026-09-02'
tags:
- Company
- Defunct
- Acquired
- Aerospace
- Space
- Launch-Services
- Small-Satellites
- Satellite
- Rockets
- Software-Defined-Satellites
- Deep-Tech
tags_raw:
- Company
- Defunct
- Acquired
- Aerospace
- Space
- Launch Services
- Small Satellites
- Satellite
- Rockets
- Software Defined Satellites
- Deep Tech
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
common: []
x-coverage:
  state: none
  reason: defunct
  detail: Vector Launch filed Chapter 11 in December 2019 and its residue was absorbed by Phantom Space on 26 February 2026,
    so its own host vector-launch.com is now a dormant holding domain that fails TLS name validation and returns HTTP 404
    on every path — root, robots.txt, /openapi.json and all /.well-known/* — while the earlier vectorspacesystems.com brand
    domain has lapsed and redirects to an unrelated gambling site.
  evidence:
  - url: http://vector-launch.com/
    status: 404
  - url: http://vector-launch.com/robots.txt
    status: 404
  - url: http://vector-launch.com/openapi.json
    status: 404
  - url: http://vector-launch.com/llms.txt
    status: 404
  - url: http://vector-launch.com/.well-known/agent-card.json
    status: 404
  - url: https://vector-launch.com/
    status: 0
  - url: https://vectorspacesystems.com/
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.github.com/orgs/vector-launch
    status: 404
  - url: https://api.github.com/orgs/galacticsky
    status: 404
  - url: http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=vector-launch.com*
    status: 429
  - url: https://forgeglobal.com/vector-launch_stock/
    status: 403
  checked: '2026-09-02'
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-09-02'
  status: nochange
  artifacts_added: 1
  pass: local-v1