Momentus

Momentus is a U.S. commercial space company founded in 2017 by Mikhail Kokorich and Lev Khasis to offer in-space services, including in-space transportation, hosted payloads, and in-orbit services.

Khasis is a former Director at the company and Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board at Sberbank, a Russian bank whose operations in the United States are limited by the Treasury Department. Mikhail Kokorich is the ideologist of the company, who previously founded a company for the production of small satellites – Dauria Aerospace. Due to lawsuits from the regulator against Dauria Aerospace for delays in production and delivery, Kokorich was forced to leave Russia and move to the United States, where Momentus was subsequently founded.

Momentus is developing in-space transfer and service vehicles powered by a water plasma propulsion system. The company designs a family of three vehicles, including Vigoride to be launched in 2022 (up to 750 kg into LEO), Ardoride in 2024 (up to 400 kg into MEO, GEO, HEO, Lunar orbits), and Fervoride (up to 20 000 kg to LEO) in 2026.

All the uniqueness of the product is built around the propulsion system running on water. This technology has never been implemented before. In 2019, before Momentus went public, Mikhail Kokorich announced successful flight tests of an innovative engine on the water to increase the evaluation of the company.

In December 2020, US CFIUS started checking Momentus as part of the company’s entry into the public market; as a result, several false statements were revealed. Firstly, a successful engine test was falsified, and Kokrich himself deceived investors about his citizenship status. In the end, Kokorich was forced to leave the post of CEO of the company and sell his stake in the company. He also left the United States (due to the fear of possible further litigation). Despite the identified fraud, Kokorich sold his stake in the company in 2021 for approximately $40 million on the condition that he did not invest personal funds and expertise in the company.

So far, Momentus has not been able to confirm the technical integrity of its products.