Weekly Recap #43

Main Topics Space Power * Beyond Reach Labs raised a $10M seed to develop their rigid structure for large deployable solar arrays. [source] * South Korean company Flexell Space raised a $20M Series A to develop and commercialize their high efficiency Perovskite and flexible copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cell technologies. [source] * Chinese company Qingtian Xingneng raised $14.7M led by Hangzhou Fengzhen for thin film flexible copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar arrays. [source] * Polish company Orbital Matter won €500K from the European Innovation Council to build solar arrays printed in space for megawatt-class satellites. [source] * Martin Materials won $7.1M in funding from the Pentagon under the Defense Production Act to scale their solar cell coverglass manufacturing capacity. [source] * Canadian companies Canadensys and CNL announced a partnership to build lunar tritium heaters for lunar and deep space missions. [source] Launch * Indian launch provider Skyroot flew their debut Vikram-1 to orbit, taking 6 satellites to a LEO at 450 km. [source] * The JAXA RV-X rocket conducted a 40 second hop test, the first for the innovative single-stage reusable rocket Callisto led by Mitsubishi Heavy, JAXA, CNES, and the German Aerospace Center. [source] * The Department of Defense increased Leap Space’s Phase III SBIR by $93M up from an initial $7M. [source] Comms * Swissto12 raised $70M to expand their manufacturing capability and achieve further scale for their micro-GEO Hummingsat platform. [source] * SES and Airbus Netherlands have secured a site in Noordwijk for the Eagle-1 optical ground station to implement quantum key distribution communication. [source] * Qosmic raised $3.33M for optical ground stations led by Prosus and Accel in a round intended to further their flight heritage and deployment schedule. [source] * The Canadian Defense Innovation Agency opened a contract opportunity for space domain awareness to replace their aging Sapphire surveillance satellites which have been in operation since 2013. [source] Business Moves * AST Spacemobile announced the intent to raise $1B in private convertible notes to acquire a launch provider; ULA, Relativity, Stoke, and Firefly are rumored to be their targets. [source] * SDA tranche 3 missile defense awarded $1.75B to Sierra Space and L3 Harris for missile tracking and warning satellites. [source] * Loft Orbital announced the purchase of 10 more longbows from Airbus and 1 Apex Nova with the option for 9 more. [source] * Indian company Dhruva Space raised $6.3M, making it the first company to receive investment under the AVCF (Antariksh Venture Capital Fund) - India’s VC fund dedicated to the space sector. [source] * The USSF awarded Slingshot Aerospace a $69M contract to advance AI-powered mission readiness training software for space defense. [source] * Antaris announced the establishment of Aeonyx to advance all-domain mission virtualization for defense training. [souce] Tech Advances * Lockheed Martin partnered with Xanadu to advance quantum capabilities by using the Pennylane platform to train their mechanical and software engineers. [source] Get full access to Space Times at spacetimespod.substack.com/subscribe