Payload’s take on what you need to know about the news of the day.
Space activity was up and to the right in the first three months of the calendar year. From now on, we’re going to be pulling together a quarterly roundup of the biggest news from the commercial, civil, and military space. January NASA started the year off with a bang by delivering JWST, the most powerful […]
A screenshot of NK Pro’s before-and-after analysis of Feb. 12 and March 17 Planet satellite imagery overhead a site near Pyongyang. Image via NK Pro. North Korea claimed to launch Hwasong-17 on Thursday. Analysts have described the ICBM in question as a “monster missile.” In Pyongyang’s telling… …the mega-ICBM, first unveiled at a military parade […]
Last Wednesday, in the lead-up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we wrote about how commercial satellite imagery laid bare the open secret of Moscow’s military mobilization. Satellite imagery has contributed to a growing corpus of open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis, a vital asset helping to pierce through the fog of war. Newsrooms, analysts, and amateur […]
Intelligence agencies have their own tactics and techniques to follow the latest military developments near Ukraine. But spies aren’t inclined to share all that classified information with the rest of us. Satellite imagery, along with other sources like social media posts and video geolocation/metadata, enable open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis from publicly available data. Coupled with […]
Graph: Promus Ventures. Snapshot taken Feb. 17, 2022 before market open. As we’ve written before, investing in space is not for the faint of heart. In a recent op-ed for the FT, Sinéad O’Sullivan, a space economist, HBS senior researcher, and friend of Payload, digs a bit deeper into the dynamics of space investing. The good: In 2021, […]
BryceTech’s latest quarterly launch briefing is out. We read these reports, then reread them, and then drill each slide like it’s a flashcard, so that all the data is etched into our memories. Without further ado, BryceTech’s Q4 orbital launch data: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) led Q4 ’21 with 15 launches. SpaceX had eight […]
Where did the 133 successful orbital launches of 2021 start their journey? Visualize the busiest launchpads via Spaceports of the World, a data repository compiled by the Aerospace Security Project at CSIS, a DC-based think tank. The top three spaceports by orbital launch (H/T Thomas G. Roberts): Cape Canaveral / Kennedy Space Center, with 31 launches (+1 YoY) […]
Whether it’s being part of the Artemis Generation or harboring a greater appetite for adventure, Gen Z seems more enticed by the idea of traveling to the moon (even if today that remains a far-fetched proposition). 52% of Americans aged 18–34 say they’d be interested in visiting the moon if money were no object, per new polling from Axios […]
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 […]
