Rand Releases Adversary Perception Report
RAND Corporation is out with a new report on how the US’ principal adversaries—China and Russia—perceive the American space program. The overall findings are bleak, though they come as no surprise: “The Chinese and Russian native-language primary sources reviewed for this project reflect a sustained perception that US military activities related to the space domain…
A Binary Black Hole Found Wobbling
Has Einstein ever been wrong? A study published yesterday in Nature revealed the first direct observation of a phenomenon that the famed physicist described in his theory of general relativity. In a mid-collision pair of black holes, the Cardiff University researchers found the strongest evidence yet of a wobbling orbit caused by the distortion of…
Space Force to Refuel GEO Satellite with Orbit Fab Tanker
The Space Force (USSF) has signed on to be one of the very first customers of a gas station in space. This week, in-space refueling company Orbit Fab won a $13.3M USSF contract to gas up geostationary (GEO) military satellites starting in 2025. Under the four-year contract, which was first reported by Bloomberg, the Colorado-based…
Amazon Picks ULA’s Vulcan for First Two Kuiper Satellites
The e-commerce giant behind Project Kuiper has changed its travel plans for Kuipersat-1 and Kuipersat-2. On Wednesday, Amazon said its first two demo satellites will launch on United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket in early 2023. In late 2021, Amazon said it would launch the two demo birds with ABL Space Systems in Q4…
France Awards NewSpace Funding
Want to put a number on how seriously France is taking the future of its space sector? If so, you’re in luck. As part of its €54B ($52.5B) France 2030 Covid recovery package, the country earmarked 2.9% of funds—or €1.55B ($1.51B)—for space initiatives. Unpacking the news: During the first steering committee meeting for the space…
Solestial Raises $10M Seed
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…
Exclusive: Varda Completes Vehicle System Test
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…
Pathfinder #0020, featuring Epsilon3’s Laura Crabtree
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…
A Q+A with Sateliot, AWS’s Latest Space Partner
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…
Ariane 6 Second Stage Breathes Fire
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 and NASA Launch Crew-5 Mission
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,…
AEI Acquires Majority Stake in York Space Systems
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…
