JWST has confirmed its first exoplanet—and it’s a good one. Using the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument aboard the orbiting telescope, scientists identified an exoplanet (i.e., a planet in a star system besides our own) in the LHS 475 star system that’s about as similar to Earth as any we’ve found. The planet, called LHS 475 […]
2022 was the second largest year of ADG deal-making on record, according to a comprehensive analysis published Wednesday by market intelligence firm HigherGov. BTW…ADG = aerospace, defense, and government, and M&A = mergers and acquisitions. With this one simple trick—using ADG and M&A rather than writing the phrases out in full—we’ve given you seconds of […]
Yesterday, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced that it will lend €300M (~$323M) to Luxembourg-based SES to finance a trio of broadcast satellites that will serve Western Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It’s the largest investment the EU’s investing arm has made to date into a Luxembourg-based company. ESA head Josef Aschbacher has repeatedly […]
Doug Abts is joining Astranis’s C-suite as its new chief commercial officer. Abts, a former Navy SEAL and grad of Harvard Business School, comes to Astranis by way of Viasat, where he was GM of the publicly traded company’s in-flight connectivity (IFC) business. Abts grew Viasat’s IFC biz into a “multi-hundred million dollar in annual […]
A lifeboat for members of the ISS crew is on the way. A Roscosmos investigation of a leak in the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft found that the ship is unsafe to use for a ride home, and the agency announced this morning that it will send an uncrewed Soyuz to the station to use instead. What […]
Today, satellite startup Quub emerged from stealth mode with two Air Force contracts in tow. Pronounced like “cube,” the Lancaster, PA-based startup bills itself as a “data company,” placing an emphasis on the value of its eventual downstream analytics products. But don’t get it twisted—Quub is taking a verticalized approach to Earth observation (EO) and […]
Magnestar, a new startup based in Toronto, has raised a $1.1M pre-seed round to kickstart the development of a platform to help satellite operators predict and avoid potential radiofrequency (RF) interference. 1862 Capital, the Business Development Bank of Canada, BoxOne Ventures, and Entrepreneur First participated in the round. With its platform, Magnestar hopes to give […]
Here’s our official graphs of launches by country in 2022, along with a look back at activity for the seven years prior. These visualization stands on the shoulders of a giant, Jonathan McDowell, who did great work in cataloging space activities in 2022. The increase in the US’ number of launches can primarily be attributed […]
Virgin Orbit’s historic first launch from the Spaceport Cornwall in the United Kingdom, Start Me Up, failed to reach orbit on Monday evening. Shares of Virgin Orbit ($VORB) were off by as much as 22% in pre-market trading on Tuesday morning. What happened? Virgin Orbit reported that LauncherOne had reached space, but the webcast’s mission […]
In its flagship Space Economy Report published this morning, Paris-based Euroconsult finds that the space market grew 8% in 2022. This report is the gold standard for market intelligence on the end-to-end space economy, from upstream manufacturers to downstream service providers and end users across civil, military, and commercial space. The space value chain… …as […]
Neuraspace, Ienai Space, and EnduroSat announced this morning that they have formed a partnership to demonstrate their end-to-end space traffic management (STM) capabilities. The companies say this will be the first European mission dedicated to performing collision avoidance maneuvers. “I’m really hoping that efforts like our own will help us avoid negative approaches to sustainability […]
Speaking on stage at CES in Las Vegas Thursday, Delta CEO Ed Bastian announced that the company is ready to deliver on a long-promised feature. On Feb. 1, the airliner will offer free in-flight Wi-Fi from takeoff to touchdown. Come February, ~80% of Delta’s domestic fleet will start offering free service, with support rolling out […]
