Business
Stories on space business, including company updates, funding announcements, and contract awards.
Space Investing in 2022
What does the year ahead hold for space investors? Before trying to answer that question, let’s take stock of how last year drew to a close. The space economy, broadly speaking, is growing. “Space infrastructure” companies raised $10.3B YTD through the end of Q3, setting new records, per Space Capital. SpaceX cleared a $100B valuation after secondary share…
World Satellite Business Week Wrap-up
Yesterday, Euroconsult’s World Satellite Business Week wrapped in Paris. The conference gathered together leaders in the burgeoning global satellite industry, many of whom shared project updates and reflections on the state of the industry. Some key highlights: Megaconstellation critiques: Too many companies are filing plans for megaconstellations that probably won’t (or shouldn’t) be built, according to some WSBW…
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…
Virgin Orbit and Spire Partner in Record Time
Virgin Orbit and Spire Global have signed a buzzer-beating deal to send a Spire space debris-monitoring satellite to orbit. The satellite will launch aboard Virgin’s “Above the Clouds” LauncherOne mission later this month. The deal went through in record time, as the satellite gained FAA approval and was integrated within a day and a half…
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…
China Space Forum Wrap-Up
Last week, the seventh annual China Commercial Aerospace Forum (CCAF) convened in Wuhan, China. Leaders from China’s civil, commercial, and military sectors met to discuss the country’s ascendant space program—and positive spillovers in the private sector. State updates: China Aerospace Science & Industry Corp. (CASIC), the country’s state-owned aerospace company, hosted the forum. CASIC reps…
Blue Origin Loses NASA Lawsuit over SpaceX $2.9B Lander Contract
ICYMI: Blue Origin has lost its federal lawsuit over NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) contract. Yesterday, Court of Federal Claims Judge Richard Hertling ruled against Blue Origin in its lawsuit against NASA. Hertling did not share many details in his 192-word statement. What happened? NASA initially intended to award two separate HLS moon lander contracts. Then, citing budgetary constraints, the agency…
Astra, Hughes Net, Inmarsat, Telesat, and Others File Constellation Applications
Astra, Hughes, Inmarsat, and Telesat filed plans yesterday with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build satellite constellations in low-Earth orbit (LEO). The FCC parcels out and regulates radio frequency (RF) usage in the US. Why all at once? A coincidence? But of course not. Yesterday was the deadline for the FCC’s new processing round for satellite V-band…
Morgan Stanley Note Emphasizes SpaceX’s “Double Flywheel” of Starship, Starlink
Can anyone catch SpaceX? That’s the question posed by a Morgan Stanley Research team in a recent, updated note to investors. Spoiler alert: The analysts seem to believe the answer is no. Payload read and digested the updated memo, which was first covered Tuesday by CNBC. For starters, the report is front-loaded with choice quotes from investors: …
