Weekly Recap #30
Main Topics Infrastructure * Orbit Fab announced their Raven and Nest fuel transportation and orbital fuel depot vehicles respectively, boasting a combined fueling capacity of roughly 200 kg. [source] * Dawn Aerospace announced their Loop Network consisting of a Space Utility Vehicle (SUV) and Orbital Propulsion Depot (OPD) offering to refuel satellites that have their 600 gram docking port installed. [source] * Terraspark raised €5.4M for space-to-earth solar power generation and transmission led by Daphni, Better Ventures, and the Hans(Wo)man Group. [source] * Vast and Cedars-Sinai partnered for a drug discovery and development project in Vast-Haven-1’s ExoBiosphere module in 2027. [source] * Rhea Space raised ~$6M for a deep space optical PNT solution using star tracker and geographic marker data to provide a fully ‘offline’ positioning, navigation, and timing product. [source] * Boeing and Millenium partnered to develop a new ‘mid-class’ micro-geo bus platform in the 2-4 kW power range titled ‘Resolute’. [source] * AST Spacemobile launched the Bluebird 7 aboard Blue Origin’s New Glenn-3 mission and announced the decommission of the satellite in the same day after New Glenn-3 failed to deliver Bluebird 7 to the required orbit, leaving it stranded roughly 400 km below its target altitude at 150 km. [source] * Seagate Space and Oceaneering announced a partnership to build and deliver the Gateway sea launch platform to customers and clients with launch capacity available as early as 2027. [source] * Rocket Lab announced the Gauss electric thruster: a Hall Effect thruster designed from the ground up for high-volume manufacturing and a target unit production of 200 Gauss annually. [source] Defense * Northstar Space, the Canadian space-to-space situational awareness company announced their intention to enter the public market via SPAC. [source] * Citra Space raised a $15M Series A round led by Washington Harbour Partners to further their object classification software playing in the SDA and RPO spaces. [source] * Turion Space raised a $75M Series B round led by Washington Harbour Partners to further scale their development and deployment of DROID spacecraft off the back of their Andromeda award for space-based SDA. [source] * MDA Space announced a new bus class that puts their Skymaker robotics arm on their existing Aurora bus for SDA and RPO capabilities titled: Midnight. [source] * Starfighters and Blackstar announced a new partnership for hypersonics testing. [source] * Kymeta won a three year contract with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to use mobile communication terminals. [source] * It was announced that the Space Defense Agency, Space Systems Command, and the Space Rapid Capabilities Office would all undergo a restructuring effort to bring them formally into the DoD in an effort to streamline procurement by allocating funding by program rather than department. [source] Orbital Data Centers * Aethero announced the intent to fly their 16,000 Terraflop radiation-hardened Blackwell computer on EnduroSat’s 3.2 kW Titan satellite. [source] * TakeMe2Space announced their latest raise targeting $55M of capital to develop 50kW buses for the Orbital Data Center market. [source] * Kepler announced an agreement to fly Sophia Space compute TILEs beginning in Q4 2026. [source] * Kepler awarded $30.1M to lead HydRON consortium using their on-orbit intersatellite link to test technologies. [source] * Archangel Lightworks raised a $13.5M+ Series A to further their space to ground mobile optical laser communication terminals. [source] * Taara announced an expansion to video distribution and intention to enter the ODC market leveraging their laser-communication network technology. [source] * Atomic-6 announced the development and release of their ODC.space marketplace - a new site that specs out three levels of ODC with standard and transparent pricing. [source] * Lonestar announced Starvault - a productized offering of their partnership with Sidus Space. [source] Business Moves * Amazon acquired Globalstar for $11.57B to incorporate D2D capabilities into Amazon LEO’s product offerings, and partner with Apple directly to service compatible Apple products in the future. [source] * Rocket Lab officially acquired Mynaric after almost 18 months of delay and deliberation for ~$153M in combined cash and stock with roughly 42M shares included in the deal. [source] * IonQ was awarded a contract through DARPA’s Heterogeneous Architectures for Quantum program (HARQ) to develop architectures for networked quantum computers to conduct inter-qubit communication. [source] * Gomspace won a 5.5M Euro contract from Unseenlabs to deliver a follow-on shipment of Microsatellites by the end of 2027 as a continuation of their prior contract signed in December of 2024. [source] * PlanetIQ received a $15M USAF STRATFI to enhance satellite-based weather data over the next 4 years including the capture, aggregation, analysis, and processing of said data. [source] * Hawkeye 360 won a NASA contract for a LEO RF interference study leveraging their RFIQ data product to monitor and observe Spectrum usage to establish and promote responsible, safe, space-based communication practices. [source] * X-energy announced their intent to go public targeting a $7.5B valuation IPO to raise $814M by selling 42 million shares. [source] * Global X Management launched their own ETF ‘ORBX’, a passive fund with a 0.5% management ratio that focuses purely on companies who earn over 50% of their revenues from the space industry. [source] * Congress has reauthorized the SBIR program with a few strings attached intended to provide more diligence on the potential national security implications of the applicants as well as to reduce the prominence of SBIR mills. [source] Tech Advances * Opterus won a $10.2M NASA contract to develop a carbon-based solar sail that can capture laser energy from the ground. [source] * Vast unveiled their astronaut flight suit for intra-vehicle activity. [source] * SBQuantum unveiled a $4M seed to develop a diamond quantum magnetometer which first launched with Spire earlier this year. [source] * The Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation was awarded $400K in the Aqualunar Challenge to create drinkable water from lunar deposits. [source] * The Cold Atom Lab received an updated module last week to improve its ability to chill an atom cloud to 1/10 billionth of a degree above absolute zero to observe atomic wave functions. [source] * NASA announced their desire to seek a TDRSS replacement for sub-GEO spacecraft to be demoed by mid-2028. [source] * NASA announced a partnership with the Office of Personnel Management to use Tech Force to acquire talent for NASA through the NASA Force for technical experts on 1-2 year contracts. [source] Get full access to Space Times at spacetimespod.substack.com/subscribe