2025’s Top VC Funding Rounds
2025 was the year of the nine-figure funding round.
Payload Staff
Top 5 of 2025: Out of Stealth
The space industry is growing and growing—and today we’re looking at some of the companies that threw their hat in the ring in 2025.
Top 5 of 2025: National Security
The military’s focus on space got even more intense in 2025.
2024 Top 5: Lunar
From NASA’s Artemis missions to more commercial lunar landing attempts to other nations’ journeys to the Moon’s surface, it’s clear that the entire world has its sights set on the Moon. But building a sustainable lunar economy—the goal of space agencies and the commercial sector—will require advancements in everything from power generation to mining to agriculture.
2024 Top 5: AI In Orbit
After years of AI changing the way people work on Earth, the tech is finally having its moment in the space industry’s spotlight.
2024 Top 5: The EO Sector
EO sats provide critical eyes in the skies for everything from collecting national security intelligence to assessing the damage after a natural disaster to tracking natural resources.
2024 Top 5: Space Policy
Most of the biggest space policy story lines of 2024 were actually about 2025, including how the incoming second Trump administration could reshape and prioritize space, the officials who will oversee those efforts, and some new faces on Capitol Hill as well.
2024 Top 5: National Security Space
In 2024, the Defense Department built on its efforts to deepen ties with the commercial sector, including releasing its first formal strategy to govern cooperation with industry and expanding its use of commercial space imagery.
2024 Top 5: Around the World
From China’s Moon landing to European investments to India’s ambitious space goals, here are five of our top international space stories of the year.
2024 Top 5: Launch
There was no shortage of launch news in 2024. From the debut of new rockets to the retirement of old workhorses, from leadership changes at some startups to others pivoting away from the launch industry all together, it was a year filled with shakeups in how platforms get to space.
An Interview with Sir Peter Beck, Rocket Lab CEO
A transcript of our Pathfinder episode with Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck.