Commercial Space

United Launch Alliance remains on target for the first flight of its new Vulcan Centaur rocket before year’s end, CEO Tory Bruno told Aerospace DAILY.

Aerospace Corp.’s experimental DiskSat satellite is headed to a critical design review this week, as the program remains on track for a 2024 launch.

AST SpaceMobile has raised $115 million in debt, enough to fully fund the manufacturing of its first five cellular signal broadcasting BlueBird satellites.

Space freighter module forms the basis for multiple future missions.

Telesat is switching contractors to build satellites for its planned Lightspeed broadband communications network.

Astranis plans to launch by year’s end its UtilitySat, a multiband and relocatable small communications satellite.

German satellite launcher developer Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has secured €30 million ($32.8 million) from global investment firm KKR.

Our roundup of the main aerospace and defense stories making the news this week.

Archer Aviation has raised a $215 million funding round led by automaker Stellantis.

Despite developing Parkinson’s disease, one of Virgin Galactic’s first customers boarded the company’s VSS Unity spaceship for a suborbital ride.

Using inputs from the fledging HAPS industry, Frontex believes HAPS would be useful for Earth observation.

Viasat executives also said the "unexpected event" with the ViaSat-3 reflector antenna will slow the growth of the company’s residential internet business.

SpaceX and NASA are meeting to discuss options for Artemis III’s return to the lunar surface.

The mission date is to be announced at a later date, and the name of the astronaut awaits approval by NASA and the other ISS partners.

Northrop bids dasvidaniya to rocket’s Russian engines.

The offerings are built around a new family of vehicles known as Elytra (a term for the wings of a firefly).

The spacecraft originally were to fly on separate missions on startup ABL Space Systems’ RS1.

Benchmark Space Systems, a propulsion systems manufacturer, has raised a $33 million Series B round.

Space tourism company makes room for experiments and prototypes.

Lockheed Martin has opened a 20,000-ft.2 small satellite assembly facility at its Waterton campus in Littleton, Colorado.

Amazon plans to take advantage of an earlier opportunity to fly a pair of test satellites for its Kuiper broadband constellation.

Redesigning and testing part of the parachute system on the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will delay a long-awaited crew flight test (CFT) until March 2024 at the earliest.

Pale Blue has won a contract to provide its Resitojet water-vapor based propulsion system for a pair of 6U cubesats.

SpaceX has hot fired the engines of its next Super Heavy booster as it prepared for a second flight test of an integrated Starship-Super Heavy vehicle.

Northrop Grumman plans to increase the cargo capacity of its Cygnus cargo spacecraft from 3,750 kg to 5,000 kg.