Commercial Space

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.

The material will be carried by a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft as part of a commercial resupply service mission to the ISS.

Europe’s Airbus Defense and Space is upping its stake in the Voyager Space-led Starlab project.

NASA has moved the planned launch of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) from Aug. 17 to Aug. 21.

Virgin Galactic's spaceplane VSS Unity’s cockpit and structure were enhanced for higher-tempo operations and were tested in June on its first commercial flight.

Gallton will also be in charge of establishing the firm’s Washington regional office.

Impulse Space plans two follow-on missions in 2024 after its inaugural LEO Express 1 mission before year’s end.

Seven missions have been set aside for the third-place winner.