Despite deteriorating economic conditions on Earth—and plenty of reasons to be bearish on the sector—space tech is set to have a banner year in VC funding. Global venture investment into space startups totals ~$6.2B billion this year, according to a recent PitchBook tally (the data runs through Oct. 24). That’s roughly the same amount as […]
Apex recently announced itself to the world with a $7.5M seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup seeks to manufacture 100-kilogram class satellite buses that can support ~100 kg of payload. Its first product is called Aries. Last month, Payload caught up with Apex Cofounder and CEO Ian Cinnamon. He previously founded Synapse, a […]
Exotrail has signed a launch services agreement with Isar Aerospace. The German launcher will conduct the flights on its forthcoming, two-stage Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andøya Space and the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. More about Exotrail The French space mobility startup offers last-mile transportation for satellites aboard its spacevan vehicle as part of […]
In an effort to make the orbital environment a little bit safer, Australia has joined the US-led pledge not to conduct any destructive, direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) tests. The story so far: Last November, Russia fired an ASAT missile at a defunct Soviet satellite, exploding it into a cloud of 1,500+ pieces of debris that forced […]
Firefly made history when it became one of only a handful of privately funded players to reach orbit a month ago. Now, the self-described “end-to-end space transportation company” is staffing up to scale production and ensure that October’s successful Alpha launch isn’t a one off. “What we have to do now…is take Alpha to full-rate […]
Today’s episode takes us to the bleeding edge of Earth observation, where one startup aims to bring what it claims is a step change in multispectral data to the commercial markets. Our guest, Awais Ahmed, is the CEO and cofounder of Pixxel. The Indian-American startup, which is building a health monitor for Earth, has raised […]
Wyvern has raised $7M in a seed plus round led by Uncork Capital, bringing the hyperspectral startup’s total financing to ~$15M to date. Previous investors MaC Venture Capital and Y Combinator also participated in this round. MaC led Wyvern’s seed round in October 2021; Wyvern also recently graduated from YC’s W22 batch. The Edmonton, Canada […]
Launching satellites to space is a risky business. The field of orbitally proven vehicles remains small, sensor and payload technology is new and constantly changing, and certain orbital regimes are getting more crowded by the month. Insurers, of course, are no strangers to risk. The space insurance industry dates back nearly 60 years. But the […]
SatixFy completed its SPAC merger with Endurance Acquisition Corp ($EDNC) last week, after shareholders voted to approve the deal Wednesday. The Israeli satcom company had its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, Oct. 28, represented by the ticker $SATX. SatixFy 101 The company is a fabless chipmaker and developer […]
The Pentagon’s long-awaited National Defense Strategy warns that conflict in space could quickly spiral out of control without a clear set of norms and expectations. Released Thursday, the strategy breaks out space concerns primarily into three buckets: Dangers of escalation The risk of accidentally escalating a conflict in space is “particularly high due to unclear […]
For the first time ever, researchers have detected seismic waves on the surface of another celestial body. On December 24, 2021, scientists working on the Marsquake Service at ETH Zurich recorded the unexpected quake using the seismometer on NASA’s InSight lander. Unlike the deep-seated rumblings kilometers below the surface they’d observed over the past three […]
For millennia, humanity has been gazing up toward the stars, trying to make sense of the glittering madness. Hipparchus, a Greek astronomer who lived about 2,100 years ago, is credited not only with creating trigonometry, but also with assigning the first numerical coordinates to stars. The fabled star catalog itself was lost to the ages. […]
