BroadbandLEOMilitary

Starlink App Sees Downloads Spike in Ukraine

SpaceX has trucked in Starlink terminals to Ukraine to keep the country online during the ongoing war. Over 5,000 terminals are in the country, the Washington Post reported over the weekend.   Tesla has complemented these efforts by supplying battery storage systems that can power Starlink dishes, per an internal company email seen by CNBC. SpaceX […]

BroadbandStartups

Astranis Completes Final Testing for First Commercial Satellite 

Astranis says its first commercial satellite is “ready for launch.”  On Wednesday, the SF-based space unicorn said it had cleared all major tests for its first MicroGEO satellite…including the vibe test campaign (vibration/vibroacoustic tests), along with final solar array and antenna deployment tests, propulsion system tests, software tests, and electrical checkouts.  In late December, the […]

Startups

QuadSAT Uses Drones to Test European Earth Station Antennas

QuadSAT said this morning that it partnered with ESA’s ESOC mission control center to run a drone-based measurement campaign of 13- and 15-meter European antennas at Kiruna Earth Station. The Danish startup says that this represents the first time anyone has used a drone to measure a 15m antenna and run tracking tests on it.  […]

EOStartupsVC/PE

Synthetaic Raises $13M Series A, Led by Lupa Systems

AI startup Synthetaic has closed a $13M Series A, the Delafield, WI-based company announced this morning. Lupa Systems led the round, with TitleTown Tech, Betaworks, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Esri also participating. Synthetaic has raised $17.5M to date.  AI’s “data problem” Labeled data is a must for most state-of-the-art models. In a world where scale […]

Travel

Life Imitates Art, and Pete Is Going to Space

Screenshot via SNL/YouTube. Last summer, Davidson played “Chad on Mars” in an SNL skit with Elon Musk.  Turns out the rumors were true. SNL’s Pete Davidson will be on Blue Origin’s next crewed suborbital space trip. Davidson will be joined by Marty Allen, married duo Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and Dr. George Nield on […]

BroadbandMilitary

Report: Western Intelligence Agencies Probing Viasat European Outages

Western intelligence sources have confirmed to Reuters that a broad cyberattack disrupted Viasat broadband satellite internet services in and around Ukraine. Though sources declined to say who carried out the attack (or, at least, definitively make an attribution), the timing gives us some hints. The cyberattack began when Russian missiles started flying into Ukraine and […]

EOLEOMilitary

MDA Is Sharing Satellite Imagery with Kyiv

Image: MDA MDA, a Canadian satellite developer and geospatial analytics provider, announced Tuesday that it is supplying satellite imagery to Ukraine. The move follows a similar announcement the same day from Satellogic and Astraea. In a statement, MDA said it “secured special authorization” from the Canadian government “to collect synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery over […]

EquitiesLEOStartups

Tomorrow.io SPAC Called Off

Pine Technology Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ:PTOC) and Tomorrow.io (née ClimaCell) have called off their SPAC merger, the two said yesterday. $PTOC closed the day down ~1.4%.  Announced Dec. 7, the transaction was expected to give the weather forecasting company (and nascent constellation developer) a $1.2B post-deal valuation, while providing Tomorrow.io with up to $420M in gross […]

BroadbandLEOMilitary

LEO Megaconstellations Are…Dual-Use?

From rocket engines to Earth-observing satellites to the ISS, seemingly no element of space has been spared from rapidly rising geopolitical and off-world tensions between Russia and the West. LEO internet megaconstellations in buildout phase are no exception to this rule.  ICYMI Let’s start with OneWeb. Russia sought assurances that OneWeb internet satellites wouldn’t be used for military purposes, with […]

EOMilitary

Ukraine Asks Commercial Satellite Operators to Share Imagery

Earlier this week, Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov told reporters that it was critical for Ukraine’s military to gain real-time access to Western satellite operators’ imagery (h/t Ars Technica). “Right now, we need to have this intelligence,” Polyakov said Monday, as quoted by Ars. “Every night, we’ve been bombarded, and at night we are blind.” Polyakov said […]

EquitiesLaunch

Rocket Lab Launches Synspective Satellite; Announces Q4 Financial Results

Image via Rocket Lab Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) doesn’t procrastinate on Mondays. The launcher had a busy day.  In NZ: Rocket Lab launched “The Owl’s Night Continues” from its new Pad B. An Electron successfully deployed a StriX-β satellite for Japanese SAR operator Synspective. To date, Rocket Lab has now deployed 110 satellites.  In VA: As […]