WASHINGTON — Voyager Space has acquired engineering company ZIN Technologies to help build up expertise needed for its Starlab commercial space station. Voyager announced March 13 it acquired Cleveland-based ZIN Technologies for an undisclosed sum. ZIN is known for microgravity research equipment it has flown on the Space Shuttle, International […]
Space
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WASHINGTON — Danish startup Quadsat said March 15 it has raised 9 million euros ($9.6 million) to expand a business that uses drones as stand-ins for satellites to test and calibrate antennas on the ground. The Series A round was led by British early-stage investor IQ Capital, Quadsat CEO Joakim […]
HELSINKI — China launched a new classified satellite Wednesday as part of an apparent space systems development test program. A Long March 11 solid rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 7:41 a.m. Eastern, March 15, rising into the dusk above the Gobi Desert. […]
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force chief of space operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman in congressional testimony March 14 singled out China as the “most immediate threat” as it continues to weaponize its space technology. Among the most concerning of China’s technologies, he said, are ground-based lasers designed to disrupt […]
WASHINGTON — NASA selected Firefly Aerospace to land payloads on the far side of the moon and to place a European satellite into lunar orbit. NASA announced March 14 it awarded a $112 million task order through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to Texas-based Firefly Aerospace for a […]
The U.S. Defense Department’s head of space acquisitions circulated a memo last fall calling for the Pentagon to embrace a faster, more commercial approach to building satellites. At the top of Frank Calvelli’s “Space Acquisition Tenets” list is to pivot away from billion-dollar behemoths that take a decade to build […]
WASHINGTON — Although still weeks out from launching its first pair of prototype satellites, Amazon unveiled user terminals March 14 for a planned 3,200-satellite broadband constellation it expects will start providing beta services from low Earth orbit next year. The company showcased three engineering antenna models for its Project Kuiper […]
WASHINGTON — Mexican telco Apco Networks said March 14 it has ordered two small satellites from Astranis for a launch toward geostationary orbit (GEO) next year. The satellites are part of a third batch of satellites Astranis plans to launch together on an undisclosed dedicated rocket, Astranis CEO and cofounder […]
WASHINGTON – Kayhan Space has upgraded its space traffic management platform to help satellite operators coordinate collision avoidance. In contrast to Kayhan’s Pathfinder Pro, which assesses conjunction risk and recommends maneuvers for individual constellations, Pathfinder 2.0 is designed to help satellite operators avoid one another. “Operators can set preferences for […]
Karina Drees is the president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. The commercial space industry is driving a new era of exploration, economic opportunity, and American leadership, introducing technologies that are revolutionizing access to the cosmos. The current regulatory regime governing space activities, divided among the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Federal […]
WASHINGTON — The biggest known cyberattack of the Ukraine war happened more than a year ago when Russian hackers targeted satellite modems and knocked Viasat’s KA-SAT customers offline in Ukraine and other parts of Europe. Viasat, a global communications firm based in Carlsbad, California, used the lessons from that attack […]
WASHINGTON — Despite the near-term shakeup caused by a bank failure and broader economic pressures, investors expect funding of space companies to rebound in 2023. Speaking on a panel at the Satellite 2023 conference here March 13, Mark Boggett, chief executive of Seraphim Space, said that his fund estimated investment […]
WASHINGTON – Companies with a history of manufacturing large geostationary satellites have succeeded in diversifying their product lines to attract new customers. “We are not on the precipice of change; The entire business has changed,” Cyrus Dhalla, Northrop Grumman Tactical Space Systems Division senior vice president and general manager, […]
WASHINGTON – Aalyria, the company marketing technology developed by Google parent Alphabet, announced an agreement March 13 with Rivada Space Networks. Rivada will use Spacetime, Aalyria’s network orchestration technology, in its planned low-Earth orbit communications constellation. Spacetime is designed to ensure reliable, secure communications by continuously analyzing possible data paths. […]
WASHINGTON — Space startups breathed a collective sigh of relief after the U.S. government moved to protect all deposits placed with the Silicon Valley Bank. “We’d been panicking all weekend,” said Mark Boggett, CEO of U.K.-based venture capital firm Seraphim Space. When A third of the Seraphim Space portfolio companies […]
WASHINGTON — L3Harris Technologies won a $765.5 million NASA contract to develop the imager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geostationary Extended Observations satellite program. The cost-plus-award-fee contract for the GeoXO imager, known as GXI, covers development of two flight instruments and includes options for additional imagers. The contract […]
WASHINGTON — Executives seeking new businesses from connecting satellites directly to standard smartphones are divided over how quickly this market could grow. Regulatory challenges, potential spectrum interference, customer demand, and the need to fund and deploy constellations capable of voice and other high-bandwidth services are big question marks for this […]
WASHINGTON — NASA is projecting spending nearly $1 billion on a tug to deorbit the International Space Station at the end of the decade to provide redundancy for safely disposing of the station. NASA released additional details March 13 about its fiscal year 2024 budget proposal. An outline of the […]
WASHINGTON — With several GPS satellites in storage awaiting launch opportunities, the U.S. Space Force decided to press pause on new orders, the top Air Force budget official said March 13. The Space Force in last year’s budget was projecting to order two Global Positioning System GPS 3F satellites from […]
Stan Crow is an astronautical engineer with 35 years of experience in space, technology, and business roles in the U.S. Air Force, Northrop Grumman, and McKinsey and Company’s aerospace and defense practice. He now advises businesses and investors globally. Innovation is happening in space. There is an exciting profusion of […]