Roscosmos Space Corp. launched a Proton-M heavy rocket with two Russian communication satellites from Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan at 7:07 a.m. on Dec. 13.
The six-seater New Shepard—flying with a full cabin for the first time—lifted off from Blue Origin’s spaceport near Van Horn, Texas, at 9 a.m. local time.
An additional friction stir welding facility in Thales Alenia Space’s Turin factory is helping meet increased demand from space station operators for pressurized modules.
Tomorrow.io—the former ClimaCell weather services company that rebranded and announced a plan to launch and operate a constellation of relatively small satellites by 2022—will go public via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
The plan to begin production in the UK would likely mean the closure of OneWeb’s Florida-based facility which used automation to produce its first generation of satellites.
After a successful launch and 7-hr. ride into geosynchronous orbit, a long-awaited optical communications relay experiment, designed and financed by NASA, is in position to begin a technology demonstration in March.
The Series A round will go toward accelerating Israel-based HiSKy’s technology development and market outreach for its satellite terminals aimed at the Internet of Things market.
ArianeGroup will develop a reusable mini-launcher for entry into service in 2026, Bruno Le Maire, French minister of economy and finance, announced Dec. 6.
“This latest round of funding will dramatically accelerate our ability to make on-orbit servicing routine by 2030,” Astroscale founder and CEO Nobu Okada said.
The eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to venture into space, will fly on the Blue Origin suborbital spacecraft named after her father, the company said on Nov. 23.
Astra Space, a California-based startup staking a claim in the burgeoning small-satellite launch business, completed a successful flight test of its Rocket 3.1 booster on Nov. 20, a mission backed by the U.S. Space Force.
Voyager Space, a private equity-backed holding company of new-space upstarts such as Nanoracks, announced Nov. 22 it has acquired a majority stake in Space Micro, a satellite communications specialist for NASA and the U.S. military.
Northrop Grumman’s 16th NASA-contracted Cygnus resupply mission capsule departed the International Space Station on Nov. 20, ending a stay of just more than three months and setting up an experiment intended to improve the modeling of spacecraft thermal protection systems.
