Astroscale has moved a pair of debris-removal satellites back into position after pausing a demo of the technology last month, the startup posted on social media. The company has not revealed the exact reason that the mission was postponed in the first place, citing only “anomalous spacecraft conditions.” ICYMI: Last month, Astroscale attempted its second debris removal demonstration […]
Graph: Promus Ventures. Snapshot taken Feb. 17, 2022 before market open. As we’ve written before, investing in space is not for the faint of heart. In a recent op-ed for the FT, Sinéad O’Sullivan, a space economist, HBS senior researcher, and friend of Payload, digs a bit deeper into the dynamics of space investing. The good: In 2021, […]
Belgium-based geospatial analytics startup Aerospacelab announced it has raised a 40M Euro (~$45.5M) Series B co-led by Airbus Ventures and XAnge. Octave & Miroslaw Klaba, SRIW, Noshaq, BNP Paribas Private Equity, Sambrinvest, and Belaero also participated in the round. Aerospacelab 101: Founded in 2018, Aerospacelab is already no small operation, with two offices and 110+ full time employees. The business centers […]
On Wednesday, the Department of Defense released a report on the state of competition in the defense industrial base (DIB). So, how is the state of competition? Not great, per the report. Synopsis: Since the 1990s, consolidation has hit the aerospace and defense sectors harder than most. There were 51 prime contractors in the ’90s. Now, there […]
Today, Hawthorne-based Launcher announced the appointment of Tim Berry as head of manufacturing. Berry spent over eight years across town at SpaceX, most recently serving as manager of additive manufacturing. Before that, he led teams integrating SpaceX Dragon Crew and Cargo spacecraft. And from 2013 to 2019, Berry oversaw the production of 90 flight-rated Falcon 9 […]
Rook can’t get enough of space. At least, that’s the vibe we’re getting from Jared “Rook” Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of Shift4 Payments and commander/financier of Inspiration4. Yesterday, Isaacman announced that he’d purchase three additional crewed spaceflight missions from SpaceX. The trio of missions, dubbed the Polaris Program, is slated for launch in late 2022 and […]
After a few weeks of tension, Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) has decided to call off its acquisition of missile and rocket propulsion manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE:AJRD). ICYMI: In late January, the FTC sued to block a $4.4B acquisition deal between Lockheed and Aerojet, originally announced in 2020. The commission alleged that the merger would allow Lockheed to inflate the […]
A rocket will launch from another planet, potentially within a decade. If that’s not enough to get your head spinning, we’ve done a little more reading up on the lengthy checklist for the Mars Ascent Vehicle, or MAV for short. The Perseverance rover has been milling about on Mars for a while now, collecting samples of dirt from the planet’s […]
ICYMI…and you probably didn’t…Elon Musk provided a public update on Starship. Since Starship is poised to become the largest, most powerful rocket ever, it’s safe to say we were watching with notepads in hand. Musk gave the presentation in front of Starship and Super Heavy fully stacked, which is a tough backdrop to beat. No virtual Zoom […]
After a couple scrubs, Astra (NASDAQ:ASTR) launched Thursday for the first time from the Space Coast. LV0008 flew smoothly and nominally for roughly three minutes, but ended up failing mid-flight. What happened? Something went awry upon stage separation. The rocket’s upper stage began spinning shortly after engine ignition (based on the live feed). The payloads: Four NASA-sponsored […]
Taking a page from e-commerce’s playbook, Ursa Space has added one-click ordering to its SAR imagery platform. Processing Ursa’s business, piece by piece: SAR, or synthetic aperture radar, has 24-hour, all-weather, cloud cover-piercing persistent sensing capabilities. The technique can be especially useful for object and change detection. But in its natural and raw form, SAR data is […]
Lynk announced yesterday that it has completed a demonstration of its direct-to-phone telecom service from its fifth satellite. The company said the satellite connected to thousands of devices on three continents. The Virginia company is hoping to roll out its direct-to-phone two-way communications service later this year. In the meantime, the demo results show that […]
