Satellite servicing company Starfish Space has closed $7 million in funding to accelerate the development of a space tug vehicle that can extend the life of spacecraft and get rid of orbital debris. Servicing satellites used to be nigh impossible, due to the extreme costs associated with going to orbit. Essentially, once a spacecraft was […]
Lynk demos global satellite connection for ordinary phones and prepares for commercial launch
The days of “no signal” may be behind us with the advent of Lynk’s satellite network that lets any modern phone exchange data directly with a satellite overhead, no special antenna or chip required. The company just demonstrated a two-way data link this week and announced its first network partners in Africa and the Bahamas […]
DroneSeed’s $36M A round makes it a one-stop shop for post-wildfire reforestation
DroneSeed started as a tech-powered alternative to the backbreaking work of large-scale tree-planting, but this important task is only one small part of forest restoration, the infrastructure for which is being pushed to the breaking point by wildfires. Armed with $36M in new funding, the company is reimagining reforestation from root to crown in a […]
Terran Orbital to open a $300M satellite manufacturing and component facility on Florida’s Space Coast
Satellite manufacturing company Terran Orbital said Monday it would open the world’s largest space vehicle manufacturing facility on Florida’s Space Coast at a cost of $300 million. The 660,000-square-foot factory will be capable of producing “thousands of different types of space vehicles per year,” including 1000 complete satellites and over 1 million satellite components per […]
Peter Beck says Rocket Lab actively prepared for interplanetary missions ‘from day one’
Rocket Lab long ago graduated from underdog launch provider to industry heavyweight (with funding to match). Now the company is planning to go to the moon, Mars and Venus in the next decade.
Evolito’s electric motors look set to take off in aerospace where YASA left off in automotive
Back in July, British “axial-flux” electric motor startup YASA was acquired by Mercedes-Benz for an undisclosed amount. YASA’s electric motors generated considerable EV industry interest because of their efficiency, high power density, small size and low weight. Indeed, Rolls-Royce, best known in aviation for its jet engines, employed YASA engines in its all-electric airplane “Spirit […]
Near Space Labs closes $13M Series A to send more Earth imaging robots to the stratosphere
The decreasing cost of launch and a slew of other tech innovations have brought about a renaissance in geospatial intelligence, with multiple startups aiming to capture higher-quality and more frequent images of Earth than have ever before been available. Most of these startups, however, are focused on using satellites to collect data. Not so for […]
Inspiration4’s successful splashdown is just the beginning of private spaceflight for SpaceX
Just like that, they came back. The Inspiration4 crew made a triumphant splashdown on Saturday evening off the east coast of Florida, marking the close of the first completely private, all-civilian space mission. SpaceX’s Go Searcher recovery ship hauled the Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, a little less than an hour after splashdown. The crew […]
Aurora Propulsion Technologies closes €1.7M seed for spacecraft maneuvering and deorbiting tech
More spacecraft will be sent to orbit this year than ever before in human history, and the number of satellite launches is only anticipated to increase through the rest of the decade. Under these crowded conditions, being able to maneuver satellites in space and deorbit them when they reach the end of their useful life […]
Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck will discuss taking a company interplanetary at Disrupt 2021
Building an orbital launch business from scratch is no simple matter, but what if that business is just a stepping stone to a vertically integrated, interplanetary space company? Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck will be joining us next week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 (Sept 21-23) to talk about the challenge and exhilaration of pursuing his […]