SpaceX kicked off a trio of launches planned for June 17-19 by sending another bank of Starlink satellites into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 booster making its13th flight, a new company record.
Three months after emerging from so-called stealth mode, Impulse Space Propulsion, an in-orbit transfer services company founded by SpaceX co-founder Tom Mueller, has added $10 million to its initial fundraising. Lux Capital, a venture capital firm focused on emerging science and technology ventures that is familiar to aerospace startups, is investing in Impulse, bringing the latter’s total raised to date to $30 million.
The flight, which marked the first time Roc had flown at altitudes required for effective launch trajectories of Stratolaunch’s Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle, lasted just over three hours.
By Carole Rickard Hedden, Michael Bruno, Graham Warwick
For new space and advanced air mobility startups, the past two years have been a heady experience of investment, mergers with special purpose acquisition companies and high-risk plays into segments of the aerospace and defense industry that were mere dreams a decade ago. As the economy changes, Aviation Week editors discuss what comes next.
Launch startup Firefly Aerospace is rotating through another CEO as its recently installed private equity sponsors assert more control over the embattled new-space upstart.
Two companies aiming to improve inflight connectivity have carried out what they describe as the successful delivery of high-speed, low-latency inflight connectivity from a low-Earth-orbit satellite to a commercial airliner.
The Space Flight Laboratory deorbited its CanX-7 demonstration nanosatellite using four drag sails in April, five years after the sails were deployed and significantly sooner than it would have deorbited naturally.
SpaceX has some more work to do before it will receive U.S. clearance to launch Starship on an orbital flight test from Boca Chica Beach, Texas, the FAA has determined in its long-awaited study assessing the program’s environmental impacts.
NASA’s gamble on a startup launch company to deliver a pair of novel hurricane-probing cubesats into orbit got off to a rough start on June 12 after the upper stage of an Astra 3.3 rocket shut down early, dooming the first two members of the agency’s Tropics constellation.
Lockheed Martin has added Australian small satellite-maker Inovor Technologies under the so-called Hosted Missions Program for the JP9102 military satellite project.
The Russian government has cleared state-owned Roscosmos to sign a long-delayed agreement with NASA for cosmonauts to fly on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules in exchange for astronauts joining Russian Soyuz crews.
Startup propulsion company Ursa Major announced June 2 that it is offering a 200,000 lb. thrust liquid oxygen and methane staged-combustion rocket engine called Arroway.
The U.S. Navy has signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Kleos Space to provide radio frequency geolocation data as part of an experiment.
Sierra Space and Spirit AeroSystems have signed a strategic partnership to improve production efficiency and assembly of Sierra Space’s Shooting Star cargo module. The letter of intent covers the development and production of future Shooting Star cargo modules. Sierra Space and Spirit AeroSystems will also work together to find ways to speed up the time it takes to bring Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser family of spaceplanes to market, the companies said on May 31.
Astroscale will build its Elsa-M satellite servicer for European customers and perhaps others with the goal of a late-2024 launch after a €14.8 million ($15.9 million) infusion via a European Space Agency and OneWeb alliance.
Space Systems Command on May 26 ordered eight launches from United Launch Alliance and SpaceX under the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 procurement program.
