Q&As with leaders from space industry, government, and national security.
Relativity is in the final innings of prep work for “Good Luck, Have Fun,” its first orbital flight attempt. The Relativity team is integrating Terran 1 in its Space Coast hangar right now, and plans to roll the rocket out to the launchpad in the coming weeks. While all eyes may soon be on Terran […]
There are going to be a lot of cell towers in space. Last week, Sateliot said it was working with Amazon to build a cloud-native narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) 5G connectivity service using its planned LEO constellation on AWS. Now, we’ll run that last sentence through Payload’s jargon translator: The San Diego/Barcelona-based startup hopes to be […]
Quindar aims to become the complete web application for satellite constellation mission analysis, testing, and operations. The Denver-based startup recently graduated from Y Combinator. Quindar’s six technical co-founders—yes, six, and all technical—believe satellite operations should look more like elegant, modern software stacks. The platform, if successful, could cut traditional dependencies on engineers, IT teams, and […]
Last week, Miami-based Countdown Capital announced that it had closed a $15M Fund II. Started in late 2020 by Jai Malik, Countdown backs hard tech startups looking to “rebuild the American industrial base.” The firm invests at the pre-seed stage and often writes the first check. Malik is the founder and a solo GP of […]
Albedo Space recently announced that it has closed a $48M Series A round, co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Shield Capital. The startup also has other heavyweights on its cap table, such as Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and Joe Montana. (Happy NFL Kickoff day to all who celebrate.) Albedo’s spiel The Austin- and Denver-based startup […]
Last week, BlackSky reported Q2 financial results. The satellite operator beat expectations on top- and bottom-line earnings, riding on the back of key contract wins and a big new integration. “We have strong momentum across all aspects of our business,” BlackSky CEO Brian O’Toole told Payload in an interview. Q2 results at a glance Revenue […]
Integrate Space Corp. aims to modernize how you launch your payload through its new software stack. The newly hatched startup is creating a collaborative tool for spacecraft manufacturers, rideshare aggregators, and launch providers to organize missions digitally. The basics: Launched by space industry veteran John Conafay and technical lead Paul Reesman earlier this year, Integrate […]
Last week, Relativity Space and Impulse Space announced a partnership to launch the first private mission to Mars. To much fanfare, the two startups say they’ll try to launch a Red Planet lander as early as 2024. Under the agreement, Relativity will launch Impulse’s Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander on the 3D-printed Terran R […]
Humanity has dreamed about different visions of what a civilization in space might look like for longer than the Payload team has been alive. We’ve been planning ways to sustain human life in orbit and on other planets for decades. Now, it feels like we’re within reach of that goal—and we need to be ready […]
Render for an Artemis-era crew transport vehicle. Image: Oxcart Assembly. NASA recently awarded electric vehicle developer Canoo ($GOEV) a $147,855 contract to produce the crew transport vehicles (CTVs) that will ferry Artemis crews nine miles from their astronaut quarters to the pad in Cape Canaveral. The CTVs, as specced by NASA, must be zero-emission vehicles, […]
Carlos Moura is president of the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB). In April, we sat down with Moura to discuss the country’s space priorities. Last week, Brazil announced an agreement with Innospace, a South Korean rocket startup. Innospace aims to launch the first suborbital test flight of its HANBIT TLV rocket from Brazil’s Alcântara Spaceport in […]
Satellogic (NASDAQ:SATL) has signed a multiple launch agreement (MLA) with SpaceX covering the deployment of 68 new Earth observation (EO) satellites. The freshly inked MLA succeeds Satellogic’s current one covering 2022 SpaceX launches. On April 1, SpaceX launched five Satellogic satellites to a sun-synchronous orbit on the Transporter-4 rideshare mission. Satellogic says the launch deals […]
