Ryan Duffy
A Q&A with Chris Boshuizen
As 2021 draws to a close, Payload recently sat down with Dr. Chris Boshuizen to get his thoughts on the last year in space—and what to expect in the coming decade. Bio in <40 words: Boshuizen is an operating partner at DCVC, where he invests in space and “deep tech” startups. The Australian engineer is cofounder…
Recapping TC Sessions: Space 2021
From Tuesday to Wednesday, TechCrunch held TC Sessions: Space 2021, with excellent programming and speakers from startupland, the investment community, NASA, academia, and more. We took diligent notes and wanted to share some of the notable highlights below. Debris: A spacecraft is 10X more likely to be hit by a dead satellite or cataloged debris than an…
STOKE (YC W21) Raises $65M Series A Led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures
STOKE Space Technologies announced this morning that it has raised a $65M Series A. The Seattle space startup is developing a fully reusable rocket. Breakthrough Energy Ventures led the round, which was joined by new investors Spark Capital, Point72 Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Alameda Research, and Global Founders Capital. Existing investors who also joined: NFX, MaC…
Albedo Granted NOAA License to Sell 10cm Satellite Imagery
Albedo has been approved to sell 10-cm commercial satellite imagery, the startup announced yesterday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has granted a first-of-its-kind license to Albedo, allowing it to sell satellite imagery at a resolution of 10 cm/pixel. That’s more granular than anything commercially offered today. Changing times…A few decades ago, the US greenlighted…
Astranis and Andesat Strike $90M Deal to Expand Connectivity in Peru
This week, SF-based Astranis announced a $90M deal with Andesat, a Latin American telco, to provide broadband capacity to cell towers in Peru. Astranis’s satellite will extend connectivity to underserved, remote pockets of Peru—and help cell networks leapfrog from 2G to 4G across the country. It’s a “landmark deal,” Astranis cofounder and CEO John Gedmark…
A Q&A with NASA’s Astronaut Candidates
Payload spoke with Anil Menon, Deniz Burnham, and Jack Hathaway, three of the ten candidates in NASA’s new astronaut class. The astronauts-to-be talked with us about their unique and winding paths to this point, their passion for space, and their hopes for the Artemis generation of lunar exploration. Anil Menon, a US Air Force lieutenant…
BlackRock Leads Loft Orbital’s $140 Million Raise
Loft Orbital, an SF-based space infrastructure-as-a-service startup, has announced a $140M fundraising round led by BlackRock, with participation from CEAS Investments, Foundation Capital, Uncork Capital, Ubiquity VC, and others. Loft 101: The startup abstracts away the complexity of going to space by handling payload integration, satellite launches, regulatory compliance, ground stations, data transmission, and on-orbit…
Euroconsult: Get Ready for “Fast Space”
Euroconsult has published the 24th edition of “satellites to be built & launched.” The report serves as the gold standard for market intelligence on, you guessed it, building and launching satellites. The European consultancy expects 17,000 satellites to be launched over the next decade. The migration to LEO and deployment of tiny, lightweight satellites are evident in the…
Going Deeper on Space Lasers
Due to the data transmission and latency benefits of optical laser communications, it’s not just NASA tinkering with the technology. In China, researchers recently trialed laser-based communications between ground stations and the BeiDou constellation. In the private sector…Mynaric, which makes laser comms systems for the space industry, recently IPO’d on the Nasdaq. The German company…
Judge: Satellite License Is Theia’s “Largest Asset by far”
Anyone in the market for an FCC satellite license? A federal judge has ordered that a financially underwater company be stripped of its most prized asset: its FCC license. The backstory: Creditors sued Theia Group to recover hundreds of millions they loaned to the six-year-old satellite developer. Per its website, Theia seeks (sought?) to develop “the only…
NASA OIG: “Crucial” to Avoid Gap in LEO Access
Yesterday, the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report on the agency’s management of the ISS. OIG’s findings underscore the high stakes riding on success with the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program. CLD will support the development of one or more private space stations that could replace the ISS once it is decommissioned…
Report: Raptor Production Risks Starship Progress
SpaceX could face a “genuine risk” of going bankrupt if it doesn’t iron out kinks in Starship Raptor engine production, Elon Musk reportedly told employees in an email seen by Space Explored. As CNBC reported, SpaceX propulsion and mission/launch operations recently had leadership shakeups. If SpaceX can’t reliably, cost-effectively make enough Raptors, it can’t attain a “Starship flight…
The US C-Band Spectrum Saga, Explained
The FCC is in the process of repurposing chunks of mid-band spectrum to accelerate 5G network rollouts. In the US, satellite operators have historically occupied the C-band, a key mid-band chunk. Long story short, those leases are up. Dec. 5 represents a key deadline for C-band satellite operators. If they clear a predetermined portion of…
