The ISS is the most expensive object ever built by humanity, and the largest scientific and engineering collaboration the world has ever witnessed. The space station treaty, signed Jan. 29, 1998 by the EU, the US, Russia, Canada, and Japan, represented a new era of cooperation that ushered in significant scientific and technological breakthroughs for […]
CesiumAstro has raised a $60M Series B, the company announced this morning. Airbus Ventures and Forever Ventures co-led the round, with L3 Harris also making a strategic investment. Previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Lavrock Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blackhorse Fund, and HEICO, also participated in the round. CesiumAstro 101: The startup’s core product is its steerable, […]
Earlier this week, Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov told reporters that it was critical for Ukraine’s military to gain real-time access to Western satellite operators’ imagery (h/t Ars Technica). “Right now, we need to have this intelligence,” Polyakov said Monday, as quoted by Ars. “Every night, we’ve been bombarded, and at night we are blind.” Polyakov said […]
Image via Rocket Lab Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) doesn’t procrastinate on Mondays. The launcher had a busy day. In NZ: Rocket Lab launched “The Owl’s Night Continues” from its new Pad B. An Electron successfully deployed a StriX-β satellite for Japanese SAR operator Synspective. To date, Rocket Lab has now deployed 110 satellites. In VA: As […]
For those not intimately familiar with the space industry, getting up to speed on decades of a deep tech sector’s development is a high barrier to entry. Open, free, structured access to that knowledge could help to close the space knowledge gap and, hopefully, stimulate entrepreneurship. That’s the idea behind a new massive open online […]
Last Wednesday, in the lead-up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we wrote about how commercial satellite imagery laid bare the open secret of Moscow’s military mobilization. Satellite imagery has contributed to a growing corpus of open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis, a vital asset helping to pierce through the fog of war. Newsrooms, analysts, and amateur […]
Users in Ukraine have reported that Viasat KA-SAT internet service is down in the country, and the outage has spread to other countries in Europe. The likely culprit: a Russian cyberattack on the morning of Feb. 24. Viasat announced Monday morning that it’s consulted cyber experts to investigate the outages. In a statement, the company […]
The ISS and other US-Russian collaborations in space are hanging in the balance, to say the least, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yesterday, President Biden announced sweeping sanctions on Russia, in part intended to “degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.” State of affairs: The US and Russia have a long history of […]
Launcher has relocated most of its Ukrainian-based staff to Sofia, Bulgaria, the Hawthorne, CA-based company just announced. “I’m distraught by the unprovoked Russian aggression in Ukraine,” Launcher CEO Max Haot wrote in a note. “We are providing all of the necessary support we can think of to our team, partners, and their families and communities […]
Virgin Galactic (NYSE:SPCE) announced its Q4 and FY 2021 results after market close yesterday. A few key numbers from Q4 results: $141,000 in revenue Losses of 31 cents per share Adj. EBITDA losses of $65M Net loss of $81M The company had $931M in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of the end of 2021. […]
Intelligence agencies have their own tactics and techniques to follow the latest military developments near Ukraine. But spies aren’t inclined to share all that classified information with the rest of us. Satellite imagery, along with other sources like social media posts and video geolocation/metadata, enable open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysis from publicly available data. Coupled with […]
SkyFi, a startup developing a satellite imagery app, has raised a $7.15M round with participation from J2 Ventures, Moving Capital, Capital Factory, and Bill Perkins, along with investments from family and friends. The startup aims to lower the barrier to entry for procuring custom satellite imagery and will allow users to task a satellite. The […]
