Fortastra Corp

Fortastra Corp has raised $8.1M in total funding. The most recent round was Seed.

Fortastra Corp is headquartered in Torrance, CA.

Orbital defense built for scale.

Orbital infrastructure needs defense, but current approaches rely on distant sensors and delayed responses, which isn't adequate as space becomes contested by near-peer actors.

Fortastra builds spacecraft that combine commercial components with careful engineering into low-cost, maneuverable systems, autonomously navigating to detect, understand, and respond to threats before they escalate.

They claim their systems are cost-conscious enough to scale defense across entire orbits, use an interoperable open-architecture autonomy software stack for when human operators can't stay in the loop, and are validated through real hardware component testing and orbital testbeds.

Fortastra, a Torrance-based orbital defense satellite startup founded in 2025, was started by Mike Smayda, a former SpaceX engineer and co-founder of hypersonic aircraft company Hermeus, and raised an $8M seed round.