An interesting play by Lockheed - and a new company to keep an eye on:

Helicity Space, a California startup developing fusion engines for spaceflight, announced an investment April 2 from Lockheed Martin Ventures.

While the parties declined to reveal the value of the investment, Lockheed Martin’s backing is important because it’s one of the “strategic partners that will matter over the next 10 years,” Helicity co-founder Stephane Lintner told SpaceNews.

Other strategic partners include Airbus Ventures and Voyager Space Holdings, two of the investors in Helicity’s seed funding round announced in December.

I’ve added Helicity to my growing (but far from complete) directory of New Space companies.