Watch SpaceX launch the first all-civilian Inspiration4 mission to space live

After months of publicity, an NFT auction and even a Netflix docuseries, it’s finally here: the four-person crew of Inspiration4 will be heading to space today (weather permitting). What makes this launch different from any that came before it? None of the four people onboard are astronauts. The mission marks the first time that an […]

SpaceX, Blue Origin awarded NASA contracts to develop moon lander concepts for future Artemis missions

NASA has awarded a combined $146 million in contracts to five companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics, to develop lander concepts as part of the agency’s Artemis program. The awards include $26.5 million to Blue Origin; $40.8 million to Dynetics; $35.2 million to Lockheed Martin; $34.8 million to Northrop Grumman; and $9.4 million to […]

Spaceflight will be ferrying payloads from Orbit Fab, GeoJump to lunar orbit next year

Space rideshare service provider Spaceflight Inc. is going to be shuttling customers on a lunar flyby mission next year, part of its long-term vision of giving companies easy access to lunar orbits and beyond. The Seattle-based company will be delivering payload using its propulsive transfer vehicle, Sherpa EScape, or Sherpa-ES, the latest iteration of Sherpa […]

Sustainable jet fuel company Alder Fuels seals investments from United, Honeywell

The aviation industry is notoriously difficult to decarbonize, in part because airplanes use a petroleum-based fuel to fly. Alder Fuels wants to change that. The new clean tech company, headed by Bryan Sherbacow, is developing a low-carbon jet fuel that can be used as a 100% drop-in replacement for petroleum fuel, without needing to adapt […]

Solar-powered aircraft developer Skydweller Aero adds $8M to Series A, partners with Palantir

Airplanes and drones today, regardless of size or fuel type, all face the same limitation: eventually they have to land. Skydweller Aero, the U.S.-Spanish aerospace startup, wants to break free from that constraint by developing an autonomous solar-powered aircraft it says will eventually be capable of perpetual flight. Their pitch, which helped the company raise […]

Rocket Lab’s order backlog tops $141M as the company inks five-launch deal with Kinéis

It was a busy first half of the year for U.S.-New Zealand company Rocket Lab, which posted earnings for the first six months of 2021 on Wednesday – the first such reporting since the company went public last month. Rocket Lab reported revenues for the six-month period of $29.5 million. Its order backlog also grew […]

Aerospace primes Northrop, Lockheed join in Orbit Fab’s over $10M funding round

San Francisco-based startup Orbit Fab wants to be the go-to source for orbital refueling, and now it has raised over $10 million in its quest to get there. The money will go toward funding a refueling trial that’s due to launch as early as the end of 2022, in which the company plans to send […]

Wright tests its 2-megawatt electric engines for passenger planes

Just like the automotive industry, aerospace has its sights set on going electric — but flying with battery-powered engines is a tougher proposition than rolling. Wright is among the startups looking to change the math and make electrified flight possible at scales beyond small aircraft — and its 2-megawatt engine could power the first generation […]

Fractory raises $9M to rethink the manufacturing supply chain for metalworks

The manufacturing industry took a hard hit from the Covid-19 pandemic, but there are signs of how it is slowly starting to come back into shape — helped in part by new efforts to make factories more responsive to the fluctuations in demand that come with the ups and downs of grappling with the shifting […]