We came up inside the same companies you're competing with — flight dynamics, mission systems, orbital ops. We know what week two looks like when you're trying to evaluate a $200K piece of software with three engineers, a launch window, and an investor update on Friday. That's why we structured Black Night Space differently: aerospace engineers on the front lines, fast response, and a tooling stack you can actually deploy.
 

Matt Halferty — CEO and Founder, Black Night Space LLC

 

Mission Engineering Tools Built for Space Startups

We don't have time to evaluate three mission design tools.
We start you on a proven stack: STK + ODTK + LaunchPad.
Launch insurance review is breathing down our necks.
Flight dynamics support engineers on call, US-based.
Can't justify building our own mission visualizer.
Event Horizon is browser-native and ready now.
Limited budget for licensing.
Startup-friendly term licensing and bundled services.
Need to demo to investors without exposing IP.
Sandboxed Event Horizon scenes — share a link, not a dataset.
We're a small team; we don't have a tools admin.
Web licensing provides easy deployment on demand.

Design

Analyze

Operate

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LaunchPad

Training, update, and support management

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Fixed-Scope Engineering Services for New Space Teams

 Not just licenses — engagements. Our engineers work alongside yours for 4 to 8 weeks and hand off a working deliverable. Fixed scope, fixed price, real outcome. 

Mission Design Kickoff
6-Week Engagement

  • STK Access for the project

  • Senior engineer, 1 day/week

  • Delivered scenario file you keep

  • Engineering hours included

Talk to an engineer

Flight Dynamics Onramp
8-week engagement

  • ODTK access for the project

  • Built ingest pipeline

  • Ops team training included

  • Engineering hours included

Talk to an engineer

Visualization Spring
4-week engagement

  • Event Horizon deployment

  • 2 custom mission scenes

  • 30 days of post-launch tuning

  • Engineering hours included

Talk to an engineer

FAQs

  • Do you work with pre-revenue startups?

    Yes — pre-revenue and pre-seed teams are some of our best customers. We won't push a six-figure stack on a five-person team, and we won't gate access to our engineering team behind a license sale. At pre-seed, that often looks like an hour with one of our aerospace engineers to sanity-check your tooling plan, a small STK quote sized for one or two seats, or pointing you toward the alternative that's actually right for your stage.

  • Can we use Ansys tools without buying perpetual licenses?

    Yes. Ansys offers term licenses (annual or multi-year) for every product in the Digital Mission Engineering suite, and that's what we recommend for early-stage teams. Perpetual licenses are an option but rarely the right choice for a startup whose stack will evolve over the next 18 months. We can also structure short-term licensing tied to specific engagements — for example, a 90-day STK license bundled with a Mission Design Kickoff Sprint. The decision is about runway flexibility, not capability access.

  • Is Event Horizon ready for production?

    Production for the use cases it was built for.  Sharing scenes with investors, embedding visualizations in customer portals, and powering ops-center status displays. We're still expanding the capability surface (more data formats, more deployment options), and we work directly with early customers to scope what production-ready means for their specific deployment. If you have a specific workflow in mind, the most honest answer comes from a 30-minute conversation, we'll tell you whether it's ready today or which release it lands in.

  • How fast can we have STK in our hands?

    For a standard single-seat order, typically 2 to 5 business days from signed quote to license file. Production licensing depends on the configuration and whether you need add-on modules.  A clean STK base license usually closes in a day or two; complex multi-seat deployments with specific modules take longer. We can run an evaluation license if you want hands-on time quickly before committing to a longer-term license.

  • Can your engineers sign NDAs and work hands-on inside our environment?

    Yes. Standard mutual NDAs are routine.  We'll sign yours or send ours, usually within the same business day. For deeper engagements involving controlled data or proprietary IP, our Blacknight Federal enclave (FedRAMP-aligned, CMMC-compliant) lets us operate inside a secured environment. Our engineers are US-based aerospace professionals; many have held federal clearances. We've worked inside primes, NASA centers, and DoW ops cells, so the operating model is familiar to us.

  • What does a typical engagement actually cost

     It depends on scope, but the honest ranges: an Engineering Sprint (4 to 8 weeks, fixed scope) is typically mid five figures to low six figures. A single STK seat with one module runs low five figures annually; ODTK is similar. Event Horizon for a startup deployment starts in the four figures. A full Series A stack — STK, ODTK, Event Horizon, plus engineering retainer — typically lands in the low six figures annually. We'll quote real numbers in a 30-minute call once we understand your mission.