This morning, Slingshot Aerospace, an Austin-based space situational awareness startup, announced the closing of a $40.85M Series A-2 round. Cap table: Sway Ventures led the round, with participation from C16 Ventures, ATX Venture Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, and Draper Associates. In addition to the equity round, Slingshot received a venture loan from […]
Note: This article refers to the National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA), which has since been renamed the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Over the last few years, the space industry has grown by leaps and bounds, pushing our space capabilities forward at an unprecedented rate. While its weapons systems may be fast, the Pentagon’s procurement […]
The Pentagon is getting into investing. Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin established a new Office of Strategic Capital (OSC), which aims to give the DoD the ability to work more closely with private capital. Why get into capital markets? Right now, the DoD’s mechanisms for helping new, important technologies hop the “valley of death” […]
In September 2020, a team of astronomers made waves across the scientific community when they reported they’d identified phosphine, a potential marker of life, in the atmosphere of Venus. Now, NASA says those findings were too good to be true. What’s the big deal about Venus? Venus remains somewhat of a mystery to us. It’s […]
A satellite launched earlier this year is now one of the single brightest objects in the night sky. AST SpaceMobile ($ASTS) has plans in the works to build a constellation of ~100 satellites in LEO that would be akin to “cell towers in space.” In September, the Odessa, TX company launched BlueWalker 3, its long-awaited […]
There’s about to be a new Moon mission in play. SpaceX is set to launch the HAKUTO-R mission from Cape Canaveral, beginning a small Japanese company’s long journey to softly place a lander on the lunar surface. The Falcon 9 launch for ispace scrubbed early this morning to take extra precautions before liftoff, and has […]
Within a decade, a startup known for building cheap 3D-printed houses on Earth is hoping to bring the materials cost for building structures on the lunar surface down to zero. Austin-based ICON said this morning that it won a $57.2M Phase III SBIR award from NASA that will bring its 3D printing technology all the […]
SynMax, a satellite data analytics startup specializing in oil, gas and dark ship monitoring, has raised a $6M seed round from a group of existing customers. Bill Perkins, an energy trader and cofounder of SkyFi, and GeoSol Capital LLC participated in the round. What’s the name of the game for SynMax? The Houston startup is […]
Since launching on November 16, the Artemis I core mission has gone off practically without a hitch (unless you count damage to the elevator doors near the pad as a vital loss). SLS successfully carried the Orion capsule out of the Earth’s atmosphere and sent it on its trajectory to the Moon, where it made […]
3D metal printing is getting a makeover. Rosotics, a Mesa, AZ-based startup designing a more efficient, large-scale 3D printer optimized for the needs of the aerospace industry, announced this morning the closing of a $750,000 pre-seed round. The round was led by Draper Associates with participation from Correlation Ventures, Vibe Capital, and Sequoia Capital. That’s […]
Gravitics, a startup building human-rated space station modules, has closed a $20M funding round to build StarMax, its first product. Type One Ventures led the round, with participation from Draper Associates, FJ Labs, The Venture Collective, Helios Capital, Giant Step Capital, Gaingels, Spectre, Manhattan West, and Mana Ventures. Introducing Gravitics The Seattle-based startup emerged from […]
Hermeus, a startup building a hypersonic aircraft capable of traveling five times the speed of sound, has completed a major milestone in engine testing. The company successfully demonstrated that its engine can transition from turbojet—like what’s used in passenger aircraft—to ramjet, a much more powerful engine technology. Hermeus 101: The Atlanta-based startup is moving fast […]
