Rachael Zisk
Canada Looks to Allow Space Launches
Canada is opening the doors to commercial launch. On Friday, Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced that within the next three years, the country will set up the regulatory framework and licensing processes necessary to greenlight domestic launches. “For many years, Canadian satellites have launched from sites in other countries,” Alghabra said. “It’s time for…
Space Capital Publishes Q4 2022 Investment Report
Space Capital has released its final quarterly report on the 2022 investing landscape. It was a tough year for fundraising, as the froth drained from the free-flowing capital markets of years past. Though the space industry saw receding levels of capital deployment, the report’s authors remain optimistic about the sector’s ability to bounce back. 2022…
Citizen Science Initiative on Light Pollution Reveals a Brightening Sky
To get a clear, untouched view of the night sky, a person has to travel to the remotest corners of the Earth, far from any city or town where artificial light blocks out the delicate light from the stars. The sky that most of humanity sees at night is obscured by a filmy haze of…
Roscosmos and Arianespace Consider Exchange
Roscosmos and Arianespace are in talks to swap a batch of OneWeb satellites for several Soyuz components that have each been stranded in each other’s territory since February of last year, RussianSpaceWeb reports. The road to today: When Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022, collaboration between Russia and Europe came to an almost immediate halt.…
Stell Raises $3.1M Pre-Seed for Aerospace Workflow Platform
Stell, a startup building an efficient workflow platform for the aerospace industry, announced this morning the closing of a $3.1M pre-seed round led by Wischoff Ventures and Third Prime VC. The comms problem: When it comes to communicating the deeply complex, technical information critical to aerospace engineering, a lot can get lost in translation. “The…
SkyFi Launches Satellite Imagery App
SkyFi believes that satellite imagery should be easily accessible and affordable for anyone to access. Today, the Austin, TX startup took a major step toward democratizing that data with the public launch of its mobile and web apps. The story so far: SkyFi built an entirely new app and interface for individuals to task satellites…
DoD Releases Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Report
Through 60 Minutes, Congress, and incremental declassification, American citizens have been treated to a closer look into what the US government’s “aliens(???)” desktop folder looks like. Driving the news: The intelligence community’s (IC) quest to understand elusive UFO-esque unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) sightings has borne fruit. Those fruits, though, don’t offer any conclusive evidence of…
JWST and TESS Spot Rocky, Earth-like Exoplanets
JWST has confirmed its first exoplanet—and it’s a good one. Using the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument aboard the orbiting telescope, scientists identified an exoplanet (i.e., a planet in a star system besides our own) in the LHS 475 star system that’s about as similar to Earth as any we’ve found. The planet, called LHS 475…
EU Lends SES $323M for Trio of Broadcast Satellites
Yesterday, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced that it will lend €300M (~$323M) to Luxembourg-based SES to finance a trio of broadcast satellites that will serve Western Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It’s the largest investment the EU’s investing arm has made to date into a Luxembourg-based company. ESA head Josef Aschbacher has repeatedly…
Roscosmos to Send Replacement Soyuz Capsule to ISS
A lifeboat for members of the ISS crew is on the way. A Roscosmos investigation of a leak in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft found that the ship is unsafe to use for a ride home, and the agency announced this morning that it will send an uncrewed Soyuz to the station to use instead. What…
Exclusive: Magnestar Raises $1.1M for RF Interference Tracking
Magnestar, a new startup based in Toronto, has raised a $1.1M pre-seed round to kickstart the development of a platform to help satellite operators predict and avoid potential radiofrequency (RF) interference. 1862 Capital, the Business Development Bank of Canada, BoxOne Ventures, and Entrepreneur First participated in the round. With its platform, Magnestar hopes to give…
Neuraspace, Ienai Space and EnduroSat Partner on STM Mission
Neuraspace, Ienai Space, and EnduroSat announced this morning that they have formed a partnership to demonstrate their end-to-end space traffic management (STM) capabilities. The companies say this will be the first European mission dedicated to performing collision avoidance maneuvers. “I’m really hoping that efforts like our own will help us avoid negative approaches to sustainability…
