• BlackSky Holdings, Inc., a leading real-time geospatial intelligence, imagery, and data analytics company has entered into a business combination agreement with Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:SFTW); the newly combined company is expected to be listed on the NYSE under the new ticker symbol “BKSY.”
• The business combination agreement is expected to provide approximately $450 million of net proceeds to the combined company, assuming no redemptions, to fund expected future growth, including a fully committed $180 million common stock PIPE with participation from leading institutional investors including Tiger Global Management, Mithril Capital (co-founded by Ajay Royan and Peter Thiel), Hedosophia, and Senator Investment Group. Additionally, Osprey’s sponsor and its affiliates are investing over $20 million in the PIPE.
• Pro forma equity value of the merger is expected to be nearly $1.5 billion at the $10.00 per share PIPE price.

HERNDON, Va. & NEW YORK (BlackSky/Osprey Technology PR) — BlackSky Holdings, Inc. (“BlackSky”), a leading provider of real-time geospatial intelligence and global monitoring services, and Osprey Technology Acquisition Corp. (“Osprey”) (NYSE:SFTW), a special purpose acquisition company, today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination that would result in BlackSky becoming a publicly listed company. It is anticipated that the post-closing company, BlackSky will be listed on the NYSE with the ticker symbol “BKSY”.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

During the SmallSat Symposium last week, Richard Branson was asked why Virgin Galactic had gone public using a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

“I’m impatient. The SPAC gets through all of the rigmarole of public companies. Yes, I thought, that’s great, let’s do it,” he replied.

Branson was half right. A SPAC makes it a lot easier for a company to go public. But, impatience was probably not the main reason Virgin Galactic went SPAC.

When the agency’s newest rover mission searches for fossilized microscopic life on the Red Planet, how will scientists know whether they’ve found it?

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will be the agency’s ninth mission to land on the Red Planet. Along with characterizing the planet’s geology and climate, and paving the way for human exploration beyond the Moon, the rover is focused on astrobiology, or the study of life throughout the universe. Perseverance is tasked with searching for telltale signs that microbial life may have lived on Mars billions of years ago. It will collect rock core samples in metal tubes, and future missions would return these samples to Earth for deeper study.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

During a session at the SmallSat Symposium last week, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart and Founder Richard Branson spoke about increasing the number of operating vehicles and branching off into satellite manufacturing and operations.

“What they were trying to achieve was not easy and we we’ll be able to launch on numerous 747s from different parts of the world. We want to be able to build rockets and ship out quickly to different parts of the world. We want them to be able to go in to the right orbit or any orbit anywhere in the world,” Branson said.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — An uncrewed Russian Progress 77 spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station’s Pirs docking compartment on the station’s Russian segment at 1:27 a.m. EST, two days after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Sunday, Feb. 14 at 11:45 p.m. EST (9:45 a.m. Monday, Feb. 15, Baikonur time). The spacecraft were flying over Argentina at the time of docking.

CNBC reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has completed an equity funding round of $850 million, raising the company’s valuation to $74 billion. The company raised the new funds at $419.99 a share, those people said — or just 1 cent below the $420 price that Elon Musk made infamous in 2018 when he declared he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at that price. The latest round also represents a jump of about 60% […]

LONG BEACH, Calif., February 17, 2021 (Virgin Orbit PR) — Virgin Orbit, Sir Richard Branson’s satellite launch company, announced today that Tony Gingiss has joined the team as their Chief Operating Officer (COO). As the first person to hold this position, Tony will oversee day-to-day operations at Virgin Orbit’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Long Beach, CA. His arrival follows the successful LauncherOne mission in January and completes a sequence of enhancements to the company’s executive team as Virgin Orbit pivots to commercial operations.

Tony brings more than 30 years of aerospace experience in design, production, operations and leadership to this new role. Most recently, he served as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of OneWeb Satellites, where he led that company through design, low-rate-initial production, pilot launches, and into full production. Under his leadership, the company built a new factory and scaled to a production rate of two satellites per day — the successful realization of a fundamentally new approach to aerospace manufacturing.

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., February 17, 2021 (CASIS PR) – On Saturday, February 20, no earlier than 12:36 p.m. EST, Northrop Grumman is scheduled to launch its Cygnus spacecraft on an Antares rocket to the International Space Station (ISS), marking its 15th mission under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program.

The launch, which will take place from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, will deliver thousands of pounds of critical supplies and research to the space station. Moreover, many of the payloads on this mission showcase the diversity of research sponsored by the ISS U.S. National Laboratory, with investigations in the physical and life sciences, materials research, and the validation of new facilities that further research and development in low Earth orbit.

The launch service provider purchased an entire PSLV from NSIL to support the launch of Brazil’s first Earth observation satellite

SEATTLE, February 17, 2021 (Spaceflight Inc. PR) — Spaceflight Inc., the global launch services provider, today revealed details about the upcoming launch of its largest customer satellite launch to date, the Amazonia-1 spacecraft. To accommodate the nearly 700-kilogram satellite, Spaceflight purchased an entire NewSpace India Limited’s (NSIL) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The mission, named PSLV-C51/ Amazonia-1, is targeted for launch at the end of February from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota (SDSC, SHAR), India.  

The spacecraft was produced by INPE, the National Institute for Space Research (in Portuguese: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais), Brazil’s leading entity dedicated to space research and exploration and is the first Earth observation satellite to be completely designed, integrated, tested and operated in Brazil. Amazonia-1 will launch under a commercial arrangement with NSIL, an Indian government company under Department of Space (DOS) and the commercial arm of ISRO. 

What to expect when the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover arrives at the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021.

PASADENA, Calif. (NASA PR) — With about 2.4 million miles (3.9 million kilometers) left to travel in space, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is days away from attempting to land the agency’s fifth rover on the Red Planet. Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the mission is managed, have confirmed that the spacecraft is healthy and on target to touch down in Jezero Crater at around 3:55 p.m. EST (12:55 p.m. PST) on Feb. 18, 2021.

DURANGO, Colo., February 16, 2021 — Polar Moonshots are in a league of their own when it comes to the level of difficulty. In order to overcome this historically daunting challenge for the first-ever Griffin Mission transporting NASA’s VIPER rover to the Moon’s South Pole, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program selectee Astrobotic is enlisting Agile Space Industries to help them go where no American spacecraft has gone before. Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission lander is relying on Attitude Control Thrusters (“ACT”s), from Agile to provide steering capabilities in the vacuum of space. Agile’s innovative custom propulsion solutions utilize 3D printing of exotic metal alloys to provide unprecedented performance, along with minimized mass and cost.

BRUSSELS, February 16, 2021 (Aerospacelab PR) — Aerospacelab signed a co-funding contract with the European Space Agency’s Investing in Industrial Innovation (InCubed) programme for its MultiSpectral Companion Mission prototype.

The contract was signed February the 12^th, during a virtual event, by Josef Aschbacher (ESA Director of Earth Observation Programmes, taking function as ESA Director General in March) and Benoît Deper (Aerospacelab’s CEO). This signature was attended by Thomas Dermine, State Secretary for Scientific Policy, Recovery Program and Strategic Investments, by members of the Belgium Delegation  and different ESA representatives.