Stoke Space secures nearly $1 billion to speed up Nova rocket expansion

Stoke Space has obtained roughly $1 billion in its Series E financing round. The funds will prepare the fully reusable Nova rocket for its debut launch while hastening development of an enlarged variant capable of carrying much heavier payloads.

Stoke Space scales its test facility and rocket designs. The Kent, Wash.-based company is enlarging its rocket test site in Moses Lake, approximately 175 miles east. CEO and co-founder Andy Lapsa told GeekWire, “We have confidence in the foundation that we’ve laid today, and now it’s time to scale.”

Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital co-led the round, which also drew investment from General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital, Y Combinator and additional backers. Lapsa described the total as falling “within rounding error” of a billion dollars. “Not quite, or a little more,” he said. “The speed with which this has come together is very fast.”

Nova Pathfinder targets early 2027 debut with 3-ton LEO capacity. The first version, now called Nova Pathfinder, will use seven Zenith engines on its first stage. Its upper stage will rely on an Andromeda engine featuring a ring of 24 thrust chambers built into an actively cooled metallic heat shield.

Pathfinder is designed to deliver 3 metric tons of payload to low Earth orbit. Its inaugural flight, now set for early 2027, will carry a spacecraft for AstroForge, a California-based asteroid mining company. Lapsa said, “We’re going out to the asteroid belt, and yeah, Astroforge is our partner for that one. They’re looking to prospect and ultimately mine asteroids, and bring back rare earths and other important materials.”

Nova Block 2 will debut in 2029 with five times the lift capacity. The larger successor will power its first stage with 14 Zenith engines and equip its upper stage with 12 independent engines, each having two thrust chambers. This setup reportedly increases overall performance by a factor of five, enabling delivery of up to 15 metric tons to low Earth orbit and more than 4 tons to geosynchronous transfer orbit.

By comparison, SpaceX’s partially reusable Falcon 9 can carry 18.5 tons to low Earth orbit or 5.5 tons to GTO in reusable configuration. Both Nova versions are engineered for complete reusability, with the first-stage booster returning to a recovery ship and the upper stage conducting its own re-entry. Stoke is only the second company pursuing that full dual-stage reusability approach.

Active cooling enables upper-stage reusability. The firm is developing a system that circulates cryogenically cooled liquid hydrogen through channels in the upper stage’s metallic heat shield to absorb re-entry heat. SpaceX has been experimenting with different heat shield strategies for Starship, but some experts have expressed doubts about that method. Lapsa said the acceleration of the larger Block 2 timeline was not triggered by any single event but reflects steadily mounting pressure from rising launch demand and shrinking slot availability over the past couple of years.