Space tech PR case study: How we landed Mass Balance in WIRED, The Times, and Inc.
TFD translated a highly technical science story into national and tier-1 tech media coverage
Client: Mass Balance
Sector: Spacetech / biotech / AI / deep tech
Campaign: MB-X1 launch on SpaceX Transporter-17
Mass Balance is a space-enabled biotech startup using the physics of microgravity to analyse biological problems that can’t be studied on Earth.
For the July 2026 launch of its autonomous orbital bioprocessing unit, MB-X1, Mass Balance needed high-impact national and tier-1 tech media coverage. This would help the company attract attention from investors, potential pharma buyers, and AI partners. This meant creating a story that a general reader, not just a specialist, could actually follow.
The challenge
Commercial space is crowded, and Mass Balance risked being seen as just another in-space manufacturing company lumped in with hardware-first competitors like BioOrbit and Varda. Mass Balance needed to be recognised for what it actually is: a data-generation engine feeding novel biological insights into AI models for drug discovery.
The second problem was the technical nature of the work the company is undertaking. Mass Balance sits at the intersection of pharmacology, AI, and space – operating in three disparate sectors, each with its own complexities and jargon. So, the brief extended beyond just securing coverage to actually making protein sedimentation, buoyancy, and transient intermediate states in microgravity legible to a non-specialist, without losing the scientists in the room.
The strategy
Differentiation through positioning
The campaign began with a comprehensive messaging workshop. We worked with the Mass Balance team to distil their complex deep-tech proposition into a usable positioning document for the team ahead of media interviews. This work helped to differentiate the company and establish its identity as an insights and data provider focused on “undruggable” proteins, rather than another hardware manufacturer.
Translating the science
“Why go into space, and not just simulate microgravity on Earth?” was the most common question asked by journalists. The answer is that Earth-based means of achieving microgravity, like parabolic flights and drop towers, only give at most a minute or two of microgravity, which isn’t enough time for the biological reactions to play out. That explanation became the anchor for almost every interview.
We also made a deliberate call on the best terminology to use. For general audiences, we standardised on “disordered proteins” since this is accurate and immediately graspable. For scientific and pharma trade press, we used the more precise terms, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) and intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs). Adapting our language meant the story was accessible to both technical and non-technical readers.
Tailored media angles
We built bespoke pitches for each tier of media. Because of the complexity of the story, the media pitch also involved spending more time setting the context before jumping straight into the news.
For UK national media, we led with the “UK sovereign” narrative, positioning Mass Balance within the UK’s £2 billion Life Sciences Sector Plan.
For tier-1 tech and science publications, we framed the story around novel insights into Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cancer research. This topic has a high pull for that readership, and one grounded in a real (if longer-term) part of the science.
TFD were awesome to work with. We’re bringing together some extremely frontier concepts, and they helped us distil the message for a wider audience. The team were super responsive, and despite shifting timelines, they managed to line up some amazing coverage for Mass Balance on launch day. This resulted in a big uptick in activity on our LinkedIn and cold reach-outs.
The execution
A controlled, targeted pitch
Rather than distribute the news broadly to every media outlet that might be interested, we ran this as a targeted embargo campaign. We agreed on a priority shortlist of four initial, top-tier target media outlets, then pre-pitched under a single embargo, before opening the story more widely across tech, science, and pharma trade press.
Agile media management
Once the story had been pitched, journalists from top-tier publications wanted to speak with Mass Balance CEO, Toby Call, often within the hour. Turnaround times were often too tight for traditional written briefing documents, so we ran real-time media management instead – briefing and adjusting between calls as the day moved.
On-the-fly media training
Toby had little prior media experience. So, we ran rapid, focused phone briefings immediately before every interview, which by the end of launch day covered back-to-back conversations with national and tech press.
After each call, the TFD team gave immediate, specific feedback. That let Toby adapt in real time to refine messaging and handle harder follow-up questions with more confidence as the day went on.
The results
The strategic positioning and hands-on media management produced a strong launch day for Mass Balance.
- 35 million total potential reach
- 28 pieces of media coverage in global publications
- 800% increase in unique visits to the Mass Balance website
- Large uptick in cold inbound leads
Tier-1 tech and national hits:
- The Times: online and print feature, built around the UK sovereign story
(“Space is new frontier for British team working on dementia drugs”).
- WIRED: captured senior tech audience
(“British Space Startup Launches Longevity Lab Into Orbit”).
- Inc.: major US business media title
(“This Space-Bound Biotech Startup Thinks It Can Cure Cognitive Decline—and It Just Launched a Historic Experiment”).
- The Australian: extended the story’s footprint
(“Lab in space offers high hopes for new Alzheimer’s drugs”).
The impact
The breadth of top-tier coverage gave Mass Balance plenty of content to amplify across its own LinkedIn channels, demonstrating the value of earned media on its owned platforms.
Are you a space tech company looking for the same level of attention? See here: https://www.wearetfd.com/services/space-tech-pr