We found Tatooine. Luke Skywalker, here we come. Researchers at the University of Birmingham have been tracking the trajectory of Kepler-16b, a planet orbiting two stars that also orbit one another. And yes, if you stood on the surface of the exoplanet you could watch a double sunset. (We can neither confirm nor deny a Jawa population.) […]
The Australian government has awarded Fleet Space Technologies, a South Australia-based satellite developer, a $20M grant to build a “space manufacturing hub.” This new grant supplements an AUS $20M (~$15M) grant the company had already received from the government of South Australia, along with a consortium of space companies and investors. The startup has big […]
CesiumAstro has raised a $60M Series B, the company announced this morning. Airbus Ventures and Forever Ventures co-led the round, with L3 Harris also making a strategic investment. Previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Lavrock Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blackhorse Fund, and HEICO, also participated in the round. CesiumAstro 101: The startup’s core product is its steerable, […]
For those not intimately familiar with the space industry, getting up to speed on decades of a deep tech sector’s development is a high barrier to entry. Open, free, structured access to that knowledge could help to close the space knowledge gap and, hopefully, stimulate entrepreneurship. That’s the idea behind a new massive open online […]
Users in Ukraine have reported that Viasat KA-SAT internet service is down in the country, and the outage has spread to other countries in Europe. The likely culprit: a Russian cyberattack on the morning of Feb. 24. Viasat announced Monday morning that it’s consulted cyber experts to investigate the outages. In a statement, the company […]
The ISS and other US-Russian collaborations in space are hanging in the balance, to say the least, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yesterday, President Biden announced sweeping sanctions on Russia, in part intended to “degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.” State of affairs: The US and Russia have a long history of […]
Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) announced its Q4 and FY 2021 results after market close yesterday. A few key numbers from Q4 results: $141,000 in revenue Losses of 31 cents per share Adj. EBITDA losses of $65M Net loss of $81M The company had $931M in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of the end of 2021. […]
SkyFi, a startup developing a satellite imagery app, has raised a $7.15M round with participation from J2 Ventures, Moving Capital, Capital Factory, and Bill Perkins, along with investments from family and friends. The startup aims to lower the barrier to entry for procuring custom satellite imagery and will allow users to task a satellite. The […]
Happy birthday, Percy! Our favorite little rover, Perseverance, has now spent a full Earth year on the surface of Mars, taking samples and searching for life in the Jezero Crater. We’ve been reflecting on the journey Perseverance has made over the past year. The $2.7B rover has traveled about 2.2 miles and taken eight samples […]
Astroscale has moved a pair of debris-removal satellites back into position after pausing a demo of the technology last month, the startup posted on social media. The company has not revealed the exact reason that the mission was postponed in the first place, citing only “anomalous spacecraft conditions.” ICYMI: Last month, Astroscale attempted its second debris removal demonstration […]
Belgium-based geospatial analytics startup Aerospacelab announced it has raised a 40M Euro (~$45.5M) Series B co-led by Airbus Ventures and XAnge. Octave & Miroslaw Klaba, SRIW, Noshaq, BNP Paribas Private Equity, Sambrinvest, and Belaero also participated in the round. Aerospacelab 101: Founded in 2018, Aerospacelab is already no small operation, with two offices and 110+ full time employees. The business centers […]
Rook can’t get enough of space. At least, that’s the vibe we’re getting from Jared “Rook” Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments and commander/financier of Inspiration4. Yesterday, Isaacman announced that he’d purchase three additional crewed spaceflight missions from SpaceX. The trio of missions, dubbed the Polaris Program, is slated for launch in late 2022 and […]
