Startups
Stories about the new players changing the space game.
Launcher Books SpaceX Flights for Orbital Transportation
Launcher has reserved three more missions for Orbiter, its orbital transfer tug, to Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) on future SpaceX Transporter rideshares. The Hawthorne, CA-based space transportation startup’s first Orbiter mission is scheduled to fly on Transporter-6 in October. Last-mile services: The Orbiter vehicle is designed to link up with satellites that have reached generic orbits through rideshare missions…
Wyvern (YC W22) Receives CAD $4M Investment from Sustainable Development Technology Canada
Wyvern has received a CAD $4M (~$3.2M) investment from STDC, just weeks after the Canadian satellite imaging startup announced a $4.5M seed round and its inclusion in Y Combinator’s Winter 22 (W22) batch. STDC, or Sustainable Development Technology Canada, is an “arm’s-length” foundation funded by the Canadian government. STDC’s grant is non-dilutive and tied to…
Scout Unveils Autonomy Software for Spacecraft and Satellites
This morning, SCOUT Inc. announced an autonomy suite for spacecraft operators to better understand what’s going on way above our heads. Alexandria, VA-based Scout’s tech stack for satellites and spacecraft spans data fusion software, proximity operation algorithms, pose estimation, docking assistance, star-tracking, and attitude determination. Put all of the above together and you get Scout…
Isar Wins €10M European Launch Prize
Isar Aerospace has won 10 million euros (~$11.3M) in prize money from the European Commission’s “Low-Cost Space Launch” competition. The prize specifically recognizes Spectrum, Isar’s two-stage orbital launch vehicle for small and medium satellites. Founded in 2018, Isar is based in Ottobrunn and Munich, Germany. Spain’s PLD Space and Rocket Factory Augsburg, another aspiring German launcher, were…
Mission Space Partners with EnduroSat on Space Weather Forecasting
Mission Space, a startup out of Luxembourg focusing on space weather awareness and forecasting, has signed a contract with EnduroSat, a Bulgarian nanosatellite startup, to launch the first private space weather forecasting payloads in Q4 2022. EnduroSat will also be one of the first customers for Mission Space’s “nowcasting” analytics platform. The companies say the…
Atomos Space Raises Funds for Orbital Transfer Vehicles
Atomos Space announced yesterday that it raised $5M total in 2021, thanks to checks from Cantos Ventures, a deep tech VC, and another unnamed investor. The Denver-based company is developing an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) that can find and attach to satellites and tow them to more desirable locations. “We really want to be the…
CesiumAstro Speeds Up Gen-2 Nightingale Development
CesiumAstro, an Austin-based software communication system developer, has announced plans to accelerate production on the second generation of its active phased array product, Nightingale. The software-defined steerable array can attach to satellites to provide inter-satellite and ground connectivity and is optimized for lunar and cislunar applications. The acceleration was prompted by a Phase II NASA SBIR grant…
Albedo Granted NOAA License to Sell 10cm Satellite Imagery
Albedo has been approved to sell 10-cm commercial satellite imagery, the startup announced yesterday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has granted a first-of-its-kind license to Albedo, allowing it to sell satellite imagery at a resolution of 10 cm/pixel. That’s more granular than anything commercially offered today. Changing times…A few decades ago, the US greenlighted…
Judge: Satellite License Is Theia’s “Largest Asset by far”
Anyone in the market for an FCC satellite license? A federal judge has ordered that a financially underwater company be stripped of its most prized asset: its FCC license. The backstory: Creditors sued Theia Group to recover hundreds of millions they loaned to the six-year-old satellite developer. Per its website, Theia seeks (sought?) to develop “the only…
Voyager Space to Acquire Space Micro
Denver-based Voyager Space has a new deal in the works. Yesterday, the holding company said it intends to buy a majority stake in Space Micro, a San Diego-based satellite subsystem maker. The wheeling and dealing is becoming routine—Space Micro is Voyager’s sixth acquisition since it spun up in Oct. 2019. How’s that for flight heritage? Space Micro, started in…
Hydrosat Raises $10M Seed Round
This week, Hydrosat closed a $10M seed round led by OTB Ventures. The geospatial imagery and analytics startup is using those funds to finance its first infrared imaging satellite (among other things—more on that later). Hydrosat has their sights set on water stress. After a year of worsening climate catastrophes, the case for high-quality water data is clearer…
Exclusive: Turion Space (YC S21) Closes $4.7M Seed Round
Turion Space has closed a $4.7M seed round of funding. The Irvine, CA-based startup is focused on satellite servicing and space debris removal. Timely raise much? “If we lose the ability to operate in LEO because we let the debris problem get out of control, the crazy growth in space technologies may end up stagnating,”…
Planet Labs Acquires VanderSat
ICYMI: Planet Labs has agreed to acquire VanderSat, an analytics provider specializing in water and crop health data, in a transaction valued at ~$28M. The deal represents Planet’s fourth acquisition, as the satellite operator prepares to go public. Key data: In July, Planet announced a SPAC valued at $2.8B. The earth observation (EO) company has 130+ satellites currently in…
