BroadbandBusiness

Delta Partners with Viasat for Free In-Flight WiFi

Speaking on stage at CES in Las Vegas Thursday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian announced that the company is ready to deliver on a long-promised feature. On Feb. 1, the airliner will offer free in-flight Wi-Fi from takeoff to touchdown.  Come February, ~80% of Delta’s domestic fleet will start offering free service, with support rolling out […]

LEO

Voyager, Airbus Announce International Partnership for Starlab

Voyager Space announced today that it has signed on Airbus as a partner for Starlab, a free-flying LEO outpost planned to be launched in 2028. Airbus Defense and Space will provide design support and technical expertise for the space station, which is under development.  Starlab at a glance: The station is designed to provide 100% […]

EOLaunchLEOMilitarySatcomScience

SpaceX Launches Transporter-6 Mission with Stacked Manifest

For the first orbital launch of 2023, SpaceX’s Transporter-6 mission launched 114 small satellites into orbit. The spacecraft on the manifest ranged from cubesats to hosted payloads to orbital transfer vehicles (OTVs).  The Transporter satellite rideshare missions increasingly remind us of nesting dolls, as they launch space vehicles that in turn deploy even more space […]

BroadbandCislunarCivilDebrisDeep SpaceEOInternational

Space Agency Leaders Recap 2022

The world was busy in space this year. All together, there have been 174 successful orbital launches so far in 2022, and the world’s space agencies have pulled together over the course of the year to make major strides in science, technology, and exploration. Read on for our recap of the top events from space […]

EOEquitiesLaunch

Maxar, Aerojet Rocketdyne Agree to $6.4B and $4.7B Takeovers

On Friday morning, the markets woke up to quite a surprise: A PE firm was taking Maxar ($MAXR) private in a mega-deal worth $6.4B. Then, we saw a monster merger confirmed Sunday evening, with L3Harris ($LHX) agreeing to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne ($AJRD). $MAXR take-private  Maxar’s board voted unanimously to enter into a definitive merger agreement […]

EOEquities

Satellogic Gives Q3 Update

Satellogic ($SATL) expects 2022 revenue to be in the $6M–$8M range, the EO satellite operator said in a Thursday business update. In H1 ‘22, “Satellogic took the most significant steps in our history towards realizing our mission, beginning to fully commercialize low Earth Observation,” chief executive Emiliano Kargieman said. By the numbers The highlights: Satellogic […]

EOEquities

Planet Reports Record Q3 Earnings

Yesterday, Planet ($PL) reported nearly Q3 revenue and projected an annual haul of nearly $200M. The results speak to “strong execution across the company and the mission-critical nature of our data,” CEO Will Marshall said. To start… …the self-described “Bloomberg terminal for Earth data” would point you to its scale. Planet is currently flying ~200 […]

Military

Lawmakers Release FY23 Compromise NDAA Bill

Last week, Congress released a compromise defense bill with $858B in topline funding. That represents a ~10% annual increase over last year.  The fine text: The fiscal year 2023 (FY23) National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compromise bill went to the House floor last week, and was passed in the lower chamber by a 350-80 vote. […]

CivilMoonTechnology

Blue Origin- and Dynetics-led Teams Vie to Build Second NASA Lander

In the latest round of lunar Human Landing Systems (HLS), we have a National Team 2.0—along with another group of bidders—vying to build a second vehicle that would take American astronauts to the Moon.  The big change? Blue and Northrop Grumman have parted ways in their bid.  How we got here: a brief timeline  Bidding […]

Startups

Dawn Raises NZ$20M for Propulsion, Spaceplane

Kiwi startup Dawn Aerospace announced this week that it’s raised NZ$20M (~$13M) from a group of New Zealand investors to accelerate satellite thruster and spaceplane development.  Icehouse Ventures led the round, writing a $10M+ check to the New Zealand startup. Kiwi investors GD1 and Covac also participated in the round.  Dawn’s press release announcing the […]

Military

SpaceX Unveils Starshield

On Friday, SpaceX added a new page to its website for Starshield. The product is billed as a secure satellite networking solution for government users and national security missions, and it marks the latest expansion of SpaceX’s portfolio of services.  Starshield’s initial focus spans three functions:  Extra security baked in…Beyond the end-to-end encryption protocols standard […]

AnalysisDeep SpaceEOInternationalScienceTechnology

ESA Gets Nearly 17% Funding Boost

‘Twas a busy time in Paris last week. The European Space Agency announced a new cohort of astronauts and announced a budget of €16.9B for the next three years.  The sum falls short of the €18.5B requested by the agency, but still represents a 17% increase over the prior period. Lots of 17s last week:  […]