Virgin Orbit delivered seven satellites into orbit on June 30, including cubesats for the U.S. Defense Department’s Rapid Agile Launch Initiative (RALI), a Polish-based startup planning to sell optical imagery to agricultural and energy customers and the first military satellite for the Royal Netherlands Air Force.
Estes Industries, famous among model rocket enthusiasts for the company’s solid propellant motors, has spun off a new company sporting lineage to Aurora Flight Sciences that aims to provide engineering support for larger launchers.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank on June 21 reported its first satellite-related export financing deal since 2015, backing SpaceX’s expected launch of Hispasat’s planned Amazonas Nexus satellite so that rival Arianespace did not win the business with European export credit agency support.
Intuitive Machines (IM), one of NASA’s early Commercial Lunar Services Payload Services providers, announced plans on June 21 to place a communications satellite in orbit around the Moon to provide a data link to Earth as part of its second lunar mission planned for late 2022.
Supporters of establishing a commercial spaceport in Camden, Georgia, received a minor boost June 17 when the FAA issued a final environmental impact statement that endorsed the latest slimmed-down proposal as a “preferred alternative.”
A Hungarian information technology and telecommunications company is aiming to buy a majority stake in Israel’s Spacecom, a satellite services provider and owner-operator of the AMOS satellite fleet, for $65 million.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos said he will be aboard for the first crewed flight of the company’s New Shepard suborbital space transportation system, along with his brother Mark, the winner of an ongoing auction and possibly up to three additional passengers.
United Launch Alliance is standing down from its planned June 23 launch of an Atlas V rocket with the Air Force Test Payload-3 to review a potential issue with oscillations of the booster’s upper stage engine nozzle, the company said on June 4.
A joint effort underway by Vandenberg Space Force Base with state and central California government and educational agencies to add commercial launch capabilities forecasts a favorable economic impact as the challenges the partnership has identified with an unfolding master plan are met.
Houston-based Axiom Space has signed an agreement with SpaceX for three more private astronaut missions to the International Space Station—pending NASA approval—aboard Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Constellation operator OneWeb is to lead a consortium of UK companies in developing a next-generation beam-hopping low Earth orbit communications satellite.
The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed OHB System’s request to reverse the European Space Agency’s decision to exclude the company from a program creating the second generation of Galileo navigation satellites.
