Solestial, a startup spun out of Arizona State University aiming to be the go-to solar energy company for space, announced the close of a $10M seed round. The round was led by Airbus Ventures with participation from AEI HorizonX, GPVC, Stellar Ventures, and Industrious Ventures. The Tempe, AZ-based startup takes a different tack on manufacturing […]
It’s a bird, it’s a plane…it’s a falling re-entry capsule! Varda Space Industries has successfully demonstrated the descent and landing capability of the re-entry capsule for its first microgravity factory test mission. The Varda team dropped the capsule out of an airplane over the Arizona desert to prep for its first mission, set to launch […]
We’re 20 weeks into publishing the Pathfinder podcast—and we have a great episode in store for you to mark the occasion. Our guest is Laura Crabtree, cofounder and CEO of Epsilon3. Today’s episode is brought to you by Spaced Ventures, Pathfinder’s new sponsor.The company is building the world’s first space investment portal, offering direct access […]
There are going to be a lot of cell towers in space. Last week, Sateliot said it was working with Amazon to build a cloud-native narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) 5G connectivity service using its planned LEO constellation on AWS. Now, we’ll run that last sentence through Payload’s jargon translator: The San Diego/Barcelona-based startup hopes to be […]
Europe’s next-gen Ariane 6 launch vehicle has taken a major step towards the launchpad with the first successful hot fire test of a complete second stage. The test was conducted by DLR and prime contractor ArianeGroup on October 5 with the Vinci-powered Ariane 6 second stage on its dedicated P5.2 test bench in Lampoldshausen, Germany. […]
SpaceX launched four astronauts to the ISS aboard its Crew-5 mission with NASA yesterday. The Dragon Endurance spacecraft is expected to dock with the space station today around 5pm ET. This mission had many, many milestones. First up, geopolitics. All signs point to collaboration in space, for now. The crew includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, […]
AE Industrial Partners (AEI) announced on Tuesday that it plans to acquire a majority stake in satellite systems provider York Space Systems. According to a report by CNBC, AEI acquired a 51% stake in a deal that values York at $1.125B, making it the next space “unicorn.” AEI declined to comment on the terms of […]
On Tuesday evening, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral with precious cargo: SES-20 and -21. The American launch provider successfully deployed the satellites for SES, their owner and operator, roughly six hours later into a near-geosynchronous orbit. SES bought the two birds from Boeing in 2020. The all-electric satellites […]
Happy Fiscal New Year, Payload readers. On Oct. 1, fiscal year 2023 (FY23) officially began. As is tradition in recent years, Congress has yet to pass any of the 12 appropriations bills necessary to keep the government running for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed a continuing resolution (CR) into law on Friday, avoiding […]
It seems like every agency in Washington is taking a closer look at satellite constellations these days. That extra attention may lead to new hoops for satellite operators to jump through. Last week, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on megaconstellations. GAO noted that new, growing fleets of satellites drive direct value […]
Pathfinder is back on the rocket beat, and today, we’re getting a much-needed company update from Astra ($ASTR) CEO Chris Kemp. Today’s episode is brought to you by SpiderOak Mission Systems. Take the Payload/SpiderOak survey here. The backstory: Astra’s first launch of NASA’s TROPICS satellites ended in failure this summer. Shortly thereafter, Astra scrapped all flights for […]
Firefly Aerospace successfully reached orbit early in the morning on Saturday, October 1. The Cedar Park, TX company’s Alpha FLT002 mission lifted off from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex 2 shortly after midnight Pacific. Stage separation occurred roughly 2.5 minutes after lift off, and Alpha reached orbit shortly before T+8 minutes. Firefly deemed the orbital journey […]
