Ryan Duffy
Spire’s Space Services Business Shines in Upcoming Launch
Spire ($SPIR) announced this morning that it will launch five satellites with SpaceX on the forthcoming Transporter-5 rideshare mission from Florida. What’s notable is the degree to which the company is playing up its space services business. The business unit will have satellites and payloads onboard Transporter-5 for Hancom inSpace, a Korea Aerospace Research Institute…
Rocket Lab Q1 Results Underscore Growing Space Systems Business
Rocket Lab ($RKLB) booked $40.7M in Q1 revenue, which represents a 124% annual jump and quarterly growth of 48%. Net loss widened in Q1, growing ~71% YoY to $26.7M. End-to-end space: The rocket company is executing on its strategy of building out a robust non-rocket business. Rocket Lab’s space systems unit generated $34.1M in Q1,…
AST SpaceMobile Reports Q1 Results
Midland, TX-based AST SpaceMobile ($ASTS) is looking ahead to the expected summer launch of BlueWalker 3 (BW3) with SpaceX. BW3, a 1.5-ton, 693-square-foot phased array beast, will be a testbed for the company’s space-based cellular broadband network technology. Bet the farm moment? In May, the FCC granted AST SpaceMobile an experimental license to test space-to-ground…
Launcher Names Customers for First Orbiter Mission
Orbiter’s inaugural SN1 mission is nearly ready to fly. The satellite transfer vehicle and payload-hosting platform will launch on a Transporter-6 rideshare this October. Hawthorne, CA-based Launcher announced customers this morning: Orbiter will deploy craft for Skyline Celestial, Innova Space, NPC Spacemind, Bronco Space/Cal Poly Pomona, a Stanford student-run organization, and an undisclosed customer… …and host payloads for CesiumAstro,…
Astronaut Vans, a Motley Crew, and No. 2: A Q+A with the Runner-up Bidder for NASA’s Artemis Astronaut Vans
Render for an Artemis-era crew transport vehicle. Image: Oxcart Assembly. NASA recently awarded electric vehicle developer Canoo ($GOEV) a $147,855 contract to produce the crew transport vehicles (CTVs) that will ferry Artemis crews nine miles from their astronaut quarters to the pad in Cape Canaveral. The CTVs, as specced by NASA, must be zero-emission vehicles,…
Momentus, Virgin Orbit, BlackSky, and Spire Report Q1 Earnings
Image: Niall David/Momentus Even if most of us may not want to think about financial markets right now, earnings season is in full swing. Let’s run through four results from this week, bucketed into two categories. Space transportation Momentus ($MNTS) reported $0 in Q1 revenue on Monday and a $26M net loss. There’s a lot…
A Q+A with Carlos Moura, President of Brazil’s Space Agency
Carlos Moura is president of the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB). In April, we sat down with Moura to discuss the country’s space priorities. Last week, Brazil announced an agreement with Innospace, a South Korean rocket startup. Innospace aims to launch the first suborbital test flight of its HANBIT TLV rocket from Brazil’s Alcântara Spaceport in…
Phantom Sees “No Blockage” Reaching Orbit in 2023
Phantom Space has placed an order for 200+ rocket engines from Ursa Major, the two startups announced this week. Reading the fine print: Ursa will supply Phantom with 5,000-lb thrust Hadley engines that are already coming off of the production line, and Ripleys, which will have an order of magnitude more thrust. Phantom will use…
Innospace Will Conduct Suborbital Launch from Brazil’s Alcântara Spaceport
Innospace, a South Korean rocket startup, has reached an agreement with Brazil to launch the first suborbital test flight of HANBIT TLV in Q4 of this year. Hi, HANBIT: The 15-ton thrust, single-stage hybrid rocket that will be flown from Brazil is but one step in a longer journey. HANBIT TLV is designed to validate…
Q+A with Satellogic’s Emiliano Kargieman
Satellogic (NASDAQ:SATL) has signed a multiple launch agreement (MLA) with SpaceX covering the deployment of 68 new Earth observation (EO) satellites. The freshly inked MLA succeeds Satellogic’s current one covering 2022 SpaceX launches. On April 1, SpaceX launched five Satellogic satellites to a sun-synchronous orbit on the Transporter-4 rideshare mission. Satellogic says the launch deals…
Rocket Lab Catches, then Releases, Returning Electron
Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) yesterday launched its 26th Electron mission and deployed customers’ 34 satellites to a sun-synchronous orbit. Most notably, the “There and Back Again” mission had a secondary goal of plucking the returning Electron booster from the skies with a helicopter. The company’s Sikorsky S-92 did end up catching Electron, but offloaded the booster…
SpaceX Notches New Turnaround Record
On Friday, SpaceX flew its 17th mission of the year. Launching from Cape Canaveral, the Starlink 4-16 mission delivered 53 new broadband satellites to space. The mission’s booster (tail name B1062) was previously flown just three weeks prior on the Ax-1 mission. B1062 has also previously launched two GPS spacecraft, Inspiration4, and another Starlink mission. …
Isotropic Is on Hiring Binge
Isotropic Systems has doubled in size over the last year, just recently signing its 130th hire, and expects to 2X again in the coming year, the British startup told Payload. The Reading, UK-based company has created—and successfully field-tested—a potentially revolutionary technology: multi-beam, multi-link, and all-orbit satellite terminals. Origin story In 2013, Isotropic CEO and founder…
