Startups
Stories about the new players changing the space game.
NewOrbit Raises $18.5M to Build VLEO Spacecraft at Scale
While NewOrbit has yet to fly in any orbit, the company is targeting a first flight of its VLEO-capable NEO-1 satellite in 2028.
Juno Propulsion Raises $1.4M Pre-Seed for RDE Flight
The $1.4M pre-seed investment round will fund the completion of its first flight-ready rotating detonation engine (RDE)—called Project Iris—ahead of its inaugural demo mission in 2027.
AstroForge Completes its DeepSpace-2 Spacecraft
DeepSpace-2 will aim to demonstrate the company’s ability to rendezvous with an asteroid and set the stage for future asteroid mining missions before the end of the decade.
Austria’s First Commercial Sat is Ready for Launch
Vienna-based startup Tumbleweed announced this week that it shipped its first satellite—called Oasis Alpha—to launch integrator Exolaunch ahead of a scheduled flight in July.
Exclusive: Stellar Alpina Raises $4.5M to Build Rotating Detonation Engines
A European propulsion startup is trying to bring a new kind of thrust to the market.
Potomac Database Systems Unveils Plans to Amass Lunar Data
There’s money to be made on the Moon, but it’s not all mining and infrastructure.
European Space Startups Jockey for ‘Infrastructure’ Financing
Europe has a growth-stage-capital problem.
Meet Blacknight Space Labs In-Orbit Infrastructure Accelerator
Blacknight Space Labs will provide companies up to $100,000 each. In addition, accelerator companies will get startup 101 education, mentorship, assistance breaking into the defense space market—and help with everything from fundraising, to navigating the government contracting system, to finding customers.
Scout Space Closes $18M Series A
Plans for expansion include building a new satellite sensor factory outside DC, and nearly doubling Scout’s headcount in the next 18 months.
ESA Taps Edge Aerospace for Space Cloud Contract
Under the agreement, announced today, the Luxembourg-based company will develop an architecture and use-case road-map for orbital data centers.
DPhi’s Second Demo Brings Compute Space to Orbit
Swiss startup DPhi Space hosted Liquid AI’s large language model to analyze an EO image—without first transmitting the image to the ground. That was the first public result of DPhi’s second mission, Clustergate-2, which rode to orbit on a Momentus Vigoride 7 sat in March. The transmission, which was announced today, signifies a new age…
