On a clear spring evening in Michigan, the stars aligned — just not in the way Upfront Ventures partner Nick Kim had anticipated.

He had recently led a $9.5 million seed round for OurSky, a software platform for space observational data, and was eager to see what its telescope partner PlaneWave Instruments could accomplish.

However, when they rolled out the telescopes that night at PlaneWave’s manufacturing facility, Kim was left waiting. The process took multiple hours, and he was surprised to learn that the team was utilizing off-the-shelf, open-source software that they had cobbled together.

Despite the delay, Kim was not upset. Instead, he was excited. “This is why OurSky needed to exist, right? This is the problem,” he recalled thinking. “What a perfect match.”

The alignment of the two companies proved to be a match made in heaven. OurSky and PlaneWave are now merging to create a new company called Observable Space, a combination of both that is extremely powerful.

Star Wars or Star Trek?

Observable Space boasts approximately 100 employees, with the manufacturing operations remaining in Michigan, some engineering taking place in Los Angeles, California, and an observatory situated outside Washington, D.C.

The combined company has already generated revenue and has raised $11 million to date, including funding from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s nonprofit strategic investment arm.

Hedrick and Roelker noted that the two companies have meshed well together, as they were both focused on distinct businesses and did not have substantial back-office operations.

“Going through the merger process itself was actually really valuable, because when you’re going through it, a lot of issues pop up,” Roelker said. “You actually get a really good sense of how you’re going to work together. And I think both Rick and I felt really good about that, because we actually went through some really hard things during the merger.”

When asked, the pair declined to elaborate on the “hard things” they faced during the merger, with Hedrick instead quipping: “We had to decide on whether [the company] was going to be Star Wars or Star Trek.”

The answer?

“Battlestar Galactica,” Roelker said.