Stories about the companies building a ride to space.
Skyrora revealed last week that the debut of its suborbital Skylark L vehicle ended abruptly after the rocket suffered an as-yet unidentified anomaly. The UK-based startup conducted the launch on Oct. 8 from a mobile launch site erected in Langanes, Iceland. Let bygones be bygones? In April, Skyrora published an article decrying the Icelandic government […]
The e-commerce giant behind Project Kuiper has changed its travel plans for Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2. On Wednesday, Amazon said its first two demo satellites will launch on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in early 2023. In late 2021, Amazon said it would launch the two demo birds with ABL Space Systems in Q4 […]
Europe’s next-gen Ariane 6 launch vehicle has taken a major step towards the launchpad with the first successful hot fire test of a complete second stage. The test was conducted by DLR and prime contractor ArianeGroup on October 5 with the Vinci-powered Ariane 6 second stage on its dedicated P5.2 test bench in Lampoldshausen, Germany. […]
SpaceX launched four astronauts to the ISS aboard its Crew-5 mission with NASA yesterday. The Dragon Endurance spacecraft is expected to dock with the space station today around 5pm ET. This mission had many, many milestones. First up, geopolitics. All signs point to collaboration in space, for now. The crew includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, […]
On Tuesday evening, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with precious cargo: SES-20 and -21. The American launch provider successfully deployed the satellites for SES, their owner and operator, roughly six hours later into a near-geosynchronous orbit. SES bought the two birds from Boeing in 2020. The all-electric satellites […]
Firefly Aerospace successfully reached orbit early in the morning on Saturday, October 1. The Cedar Park, TX company’s Alpha FLT002 mission lifted off from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 2 shortly after midnight Pacific. Stage separation occurred roughly 2.5 minutes after lift off, and Alpha reached orbit shortly before T+8 minutes. Firefly deemed the orbital journey […]
Time just flies by in the space industry, and we’ve already arrived at the end of the third quarter of 2022. It was a busy quarter, full of major partnership announcements, strides in science, and a jam-packed conference season. Here are the highlights from the last three months in commercial, military, and civil space. July […]
Editor’s note: BryceTech’s report was released last month, not this week. We missed the original release and mistakenly thought the report was new when we recently came across it. Payload regrets the error. BryceTech’s latest quarterly launch briefing is out. These reports are the gold standard for rocket data. We read ‘em, reread them, and […]
On Days #2 and #4 of IAC in Paris, German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) signed a pair of launch contracts with Spaceflight Inc. and Indian space situational awareness (SSA) startup Digantara. Spaceflight signed a launch contract that will see RFA take the Seattle company’s Sherpa space tug to orbit. To date, Spaceflight has […]
During Day 1 of IAC in Paris, ArianeGroup execs unveiled the Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration spacecraft concept…SUSIE, for short. The proposal is intended to equip Europe with independent crew and cargo access to LEO. Currently, the continent relies solely on the US for its crew transportation needs, after cutting ties with Russia’s launch […]
Skyroot Aerospace has raised $51M in a Series B round led by GIC, a global investment firm based in Singapore. This is the largest funding round in the Indian private space sector to date. The company raised an $11M Series A in 2021. The launch startup is developing India’s first private launch vehicle and was […]
Scottish launch startup Orbex has announced that it plans to add 50 new staff to its ranks over the next six months. Orbex is developing its 19-meter two-stage Prime vehicle, which can lift 150 kg payloads to orbit. The company unveiled the first full-scale prototype of the vehicle in May, which is currently being used […]
