Stories about the companies building a ride to space.
Images: Ursa Major. Left: Hadley hotfire @ Ursa Major HQ in Berthoud, CO. Right: Hadley being prepped for shipment. Ursa Major officially signed its 200th employee this week, CEO Joe Laurienti tells Payload. The Colorado startup, which bills itself as “America’s only independent pure-play rocket propulsion company,” had just north of 125 employees in early […]
Good morning from Colorado Spring, where we’re writing this at 5:30 am local time. Amazon front-ran Day 2 of Space Symposium with what it claims is “the largest commercial procurement of space launch services in history.” Driving the news Project Kuiper, Amazon’s LEO broadband initiative, has contracted three heavy-lift vehicles for up to 83 launches. […]
Image credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique vidéo du CSG – JM Guillon The European Space Agency announced last week that it intends to develop an upgraded solid rocket booster for the Ariane 6 and Vega vehicles. So, what’s new? Well, the proposed P120C+ booster will be ~1 meter taller than the current P120, which would allow for an […]
On Friday, April 1, SpaceX launched Transporter-4, its fourth dedicated smallsat rideshare mission, from SLC-40 in Cape Canaveral. Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage returned home and landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship in the Atlantic. Launch details Transporter-4 was launch and landing #7 for this Falcon 9 booster. Previous missions include […]
Image via Astra. Note: This slide was pulled from Astra’s Dec. ’21 investor deck, not IR materials presented Thursday. Astra (Nasdaq:ASTR) recorded a net loss of $257.8M in 2021, the company said Thursday. That’s a 278% annual increase, but to be fair, Astra was making and launching more rockets last year than it was in […]
Virgin Orbit (NASDAQ:VORB) lost $157M in 2021 on $7.4M in revenue, the company said yesterday. $VORB finished the day up 8.4%. KPIs at a glance: Adj. EBITDA: -$140M (vs. -$158M in 2020) Cash on hand: $194M Backlog: $575M, 26% of which is covered by binding agreements, and good for a 500% YoY increase. Context: This […]
Longtime plans to build a spaceport in Camden County, Georgia have been thrown into jeopardy after county voters overwhelmingly voted to reject the idea. The spaceport: Camden County lawmakers began working on plans for Spaceport Camden in 2012. The site for the vertical-launch facility borders northern Florida, a strategic location to access resources from Florida’s […]
Last Monday, Canaccord Genuity initiated coverage on Virgin Orbit (NASDAQ:VORB) with a ‘Buy’ rating and $20 price target. Shares of $VORB were $6.92 when Canaccord published its research. This morning, they sat at $6.57. Defense: In the Feb. 28 note seen by Payload, CG Analyst Austin Moeller refers to the air launcher as an “emerging […]
Image via Rocket Lab Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) doesn’t procrastinate on Mondays. The launcher had a busy day. In NZ: Rocket Lab launched “The Owl’s Night Continues” from its new Pad B. An Electron successfully deployed a StriX-β satellite for Japanese SAR operator Synspective. To date, Rocket Lab has now deployed 110 satellites. In VA: As […]
Launcher has relocated most of its Ukrainian-based staff to Sofia, Bulgaria, the Hawthorne, CA-based company just announced. “I’m distraught by the unprovoked Russian aggression in Ukraine,” Launcher CEO Max Haot wrote in a note. “We are providing all of the necessary support we can think of to our team, partners, and their families and communities […]
On Wednesday, the Department of Defense released a report on the state of competition in the defense industrial base (DIB). So, how is the state of competition? Not great, per the report. Synopsis: Since the 1990s, consolidation has hit the aerospace and defense sectors harder than most. There were 51 prime contractors in the ’90s. Now, there […]
Rook can’t get enough of space. At least, that’s the vibe we’re getting from Jared “Rook” Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments and commander/financier of Inspiration4. Yesterday, Isaacman announced that he’d purchase three additional crewed spaceflight missions from SpaceX. The trio of missions, dubbed the Polaris Program, is slated for launch in late 2022 and […]
