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 […]
Coming soon, Android users practically anywhere around the globe will be able to send green texts messages from anywhere, even when out of range of any terrestrial cell tower. Iridium and Qualcomm are partnering to make it happen. Today at CES in Las Vegas, Iridium CEO Matt Desch announced that in mid-2023, several new premium […]
NorthStar Earth and Space, a Canadian startup building a constellation for in-situ space situational awareness (SSA), announced this morning it has closed a $35M Series C. New York-based PE shop Cartesian led the round. The round also included participation from Telesystem Space Inc., the Luxembourg Future Fund, the government of Quebec, and the Luxembourg Space […]
We’re doing things a little differently this week. Ryan’s taking a step back from his podcast-hosting duties so you can get to know another member of the Payload media machine. Actually, we’re doing things very differently. Today’s episode isn’t a Payload-on-Payload interview. Instead, we brought in a guest host. The interviewer: Tess Hatch is a […]
