Q+A with Tim Ellis on Relativity’s Mars Mission
Last week, Relativity Space and Impulse Space announced a partnership to launch the first private mission to Mars. To much fanfare, the two startups say they’ll try to launch a Red Planet lander as early as 2024. Under the agreement, Relativity will launch Impulse’s Mars Cruise Vehicle and Mars Lander on the 3D-printed Terran R…
China Launches Wentian Laboratory Module to Tiangong
China’s space station is almost finished. Over the weekend, the China Manned Space Agency launched the Wentian laboratory module to its in-progress Tiangong station atop a Long March 5B. Wentian successfully docked with the station earlier this morning after a 13-hour journey. Wentian: The lab module is the largest spacecraft that China has ever sent…
Geek Out: The Search for Life Continues
Until recently, the driving philosophy in exoplanet research was that liquid water needed fairly specific conditions to exist and that water on planets that orbited too far from a star would necessarily be frozen. Now, a decade-old theory with a new batch of research behind it is challenging that idea among planetary scientists. A study…
Isar gets Green Light to Launch from French Guiana
Isar Aerospace is the first privately-funded operator to gain access to the Guiana Space Centre (GSC) in French Guiana. French space agency CNES announced the news on Thursday. GSC has been in operation since 1968 and has supported hundreds of missions. CNES responded to several requests from industry to open the site to privately-funded operators…
Northrop Selects Solstar for Lunar Gateway Internet
While government-operated orbital outposts may not have the amenities of future private stations, in-space internet, it would appear, will be table stakes. Driving the news: NASA’s Lunar Gateway module, set to begin launching in a few years, will serve as a comms hub, a research lab, short-term living quarters for astronauts, and a holding bay…
Astraius Looks to US for Rocket Motors
UK-based horizontal launch startup Astraius has selected Northrop Grumman and Exquadrum to supply three rocket motors for its vehicle. Northrop will supply the first and second-stage rocket motors. California-based Exquadrum will supply the upper-stage rocket motor. Buy vs. build: “From Day 1, we decided the best way to reduce risk, lower cost, and quickly deliver…
NASA Announces Artemis I Launch Dates
The wait is almost over. Yesterday NASA finally announced a target launch date for the debut flight of SLS, aka Artemis I. The agency’s giant moon rocket is set to roll out to the pad on Aug. 18 and could launch on either Aug. 29, Sep. 2, or Sep. 5. The story so far: It’s…
Europe is going to the Moon
It’s not hyperbole, nor is it a gimmicky marketing one-off. Europe is going to the Moon with the intent of being both an explorer and enabler of the new lunar economy. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, the European Space Agency is contributing both the service module for the Orion spacecraft and a key element…
Who’s Who: Lunar Landers and Rovers
As NASA prepares to send humans back to the moon through its long-awaited Artemis program, it’s taking big steps to encourage commercial lander development. First order of business: CLPS. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is funding 14 separate lander concepts from Astrobotic, Deep Space Systems, Draper Labs, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin,…
Pathfinder #0008, ft. Planet’s Kevin Weil
On this week’s episode of Pathfinder, we sit down with Kevin Weil, president of product and business at Planet, a ~$1.3B Earth-imagine company based in San Francisco. Kevin joined Planet last April to accelerate software development, build new analytics products, and further help the company move “up the stack.” Before he worked in commercial space,…
Combating Illegal Fishing with Space-Based Edge Computing
Satellite data can do many things for governments. One under-discussed use case is giving them a leg up against illegal fishing. A team of startups aims to use space-based edge computing to get fishing insights in near real-time. Edge computing = localized computing, in this case on a satellite. Los Angeles-HQ’d Exo-Space will provide their…
UAE Announces Space National Fund and SAR Constellation
The United Arab Emirates is getting serious about space. On Sunday, the Emirati space agency announced the creation of an AED 3 billion (~$817M) national fund to further nurture and develop the UAE’s budding space industry. The UAE also announced the first project with backing from its new fund: a constellation of SAR (synthetic aperture…
