Impulse Space's Helios kick stage enters Space Force launch competition, boosting medium rockets to heavy-lift performance

Impulse Space is developing a "kick stage" called Helios that provides up to 9 km/s of delta-V to boost payloads from low-Earth orbit to geostationary orbit (~36,000 km). This effectively gives medium-lift rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9 the performance of larger, more powerful rockets. Under the Space Force's Lane 1 program, Impulse Space will contract to provide end-to-end launch services by procuring a launch vehicle and stacking the Helios kick stage on top. The article notes that the Phase 3 program design did not originally anticipate this kind of approach.