PARIS (ESA PR) — Staying in touch with each another always, no matter whereabouts on Earth, is crucial for everything from driverless cars to remote healthcare, electronically enabled commerce, tele-education and remote working.

Maintaining such connections relies not only on next-generation terrestrial 5G networks but also on satellites to make the connection when people and devices are in hard-to-reach areas.

ESA is working with satellite communications company OneWeb, the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey and CGI, one of the largest IT and business services firms in the world, to showcase a space-enabled 5G network that tests the integration of satellites in low Earth orbit and terrestrial mobile 5G networks.

AUSTIN, Texas (Albedo PR) — Today, we are thrilled to share an exciting milestone for Albedo. We’ve closed a $48M Series A, co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Shield Capital. This brings our total funding to $58M in less than two years since Albedo’s inception.

Beyond the funding, we are fortunate to partner with two lead investors that reflect the breadth of applications our imagery will support.  With Breakthrough’s focus on companies enabling net-zero emissions, and Shield’s focus on companies supporting both commercial and government customers, we could not have imagined a better duo to join the Albedo journey.  We’re excited to welcome Matt Eggers and Raj Shah to our Board of Directors.

KOUROU, French Guiana (ESA PR) — The fourth Spacebus Neo satellite to benefit from ESA’s Neosat programme has launched into space on board the second Ariane 5 launch mission of 2022.

The 8.9 metre, three-storeys-high communications satellite – which will deliver high-speed broadband and in-flight connectivity across Europe for its operator, Eutelsat – weighs 6.525 tonnes and accounted for 99% of the 6.62-tonne launch mass.

HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA has selected Axiom Space to deliver a moonwalking system for the Artemis III mission, which will land Americans on the surface of the Moon for the first time in over 50 years. This award – the first one under a competitive spacesuits contract – is for a task order to develop a next generation Artemis spacesuit and supporting systems, and to demonstrate their use on the lunar surface during Artemis III.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

While the United States and China have combined for 94 of the 114 orbital launches conducted through Wednesday, Russia finds itself a distant third with only 12 launches with fewer than four months left in the year. It’s a humbling experience for a country that once led the world in launches.

While aging boosters, launch failures and strong foreign competition have been the main causes of the Russian launch industry’s decade-long decline, the nation’s invasion of Ukraine in February has put a serious dent in this year’s launch total. Seven launches for European customers were canceled, including a joint mission to land a rover on Mars. A program with Europe’s Arianespace to launch Soyuz boosters on commercial missions was suspended indefinitely.

• It is aimed at venture capital, family offices or business angels and the minimum ticket is half a million euros
• This is the prelude to its series B financing with which it plans to raise 100 million euros in 2023

BARCELONA & SAN DIEGO, September 7, 2022 (Sateliot PR) — Sateliot has opened a €10 million convertible note to finance the deployment of its commercial low-orbit satellite constellation that will provide 5G coverage for IoT devices all over the world, directly from space. The company plans to launch the first satellite of this constellation from the US in the first quarter of 2023, thus fully entering its commercial phase.

This operation, which is a first step before launching the Series B round of financing with which it wants to raise 100 million euros, is aimed at early stage investors such as venture capital, family offices or business angels and the minimum ticket is half a million euros. This is one of the largest 5G satellite investments in the European Union.

Launch capacity for five launches of LizzieSat^TM satellites beginning in 2023

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Sidus Space PR) — Sidus Space, Inc. (NASDAQ:SIDU), a Space-as-a-Service satellite company focused on mission critical hardware manufacturing; multi-disciplinary engineering services; satellite design, production, launch planning, mission operations; and in-orbit support, today announced that it has signed a launch agreement with SpaceX for five launches, beginning in early 2023.

Sidus Space has designed and is manufacturing LizzieSat^TM, for its multi-mission LEO satellite constellation operating in diverse orbits (28°-98° inclination, 300-650km altitude) as approved by the International Telecommunication Union in February 2021. LizzieSat^TM is in advanced stages of development and offers many differentiating attributes. Specifically, LizzieSat^TM satellites fly custom payloads tailored to maximize customer return on investment; Sidus manufactured 3D printed satellites maximize customer volume within a lightweight bus; redundant attitude controls systems provide precision pointing for payloads; and propulsion maintains satellite orbit and provides collision avoidance capability.

WOBURN, Mass., Sept. 7, 2022 (SSCI PR) — Scientific Systems Company, Inc. (SSCI), an industry leader and pioneer in autonomous systems, has conducted demonstrations of packing, deploying, and running on-orbit software applications in Docker containers. The demo was executed for the Space Development Agency (SDA) using SSCI’s Prototype On-Orbit Experimental Testbed (POET) on the Loft Orbital YAM-3 spacecraft. Docker, widely utilized today in commercial ground-based cloud computing, is an open platform used to rapidly package and run apps in stand-alone “containers”. Pushing this capability on-orbit provides a major toolchain improvement for the deployment of space-based edge-processing apps, which are central to SSCI’s AI-enabled mission management software. This is the first publicized instance of Docker containers deployed to and running on an orbiting satellite.

SSCI demos the first publicized instance of Docker containers deployed to and running on an orbiting satellite.

ICEYE’s SAR technology will be a key data collector for BAE’s multi-domain satellite cluster known as Azalea™.

HELSINKI, Finland, September 7, 2022 (ICEYE PR) – ICEYE, the global leader in persistent monitoring with radar satellite imaging, is partnering with BAE Systems to provide advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology as part of BAE Systems’ new multi-sensor satellite cluster launching in 2024.

Known as Azalea™, this group of Earth sensing satellites will use a range of instruments to collect visual, radar and radio frequency (RF) data and use on-board machine learning and edge processing to analyze and quickly deliver the resulting intelligence to tactical or strategic users anywhere in the world –directly from low earth orbit.

CANNES, France, September 7, 2022 (Thales Alenia Space PR) – Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), as prime contractor for the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) satellites, is currently carrying out the final integration phase on the MTG-I1 satellite. The MTG-I1 will soon depart for the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana, where its launch is scheduled for the end of 2022 onboard an Ariane 5 rocket.

LAFAYETTE, Colo., Sept. 7, 2022 (Blue Canyon Technologies PR) – Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies, LLC, and SEAKR Engineering, LLC, wholly owned subsidiaries of Raytheon Technologies, announced today they have delivered one Saturn-class microsat bus and completed acceptance testing of the first two of twelve Pit Boss Battle Management Command, Control and Communication payloads for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack Program. 

Blue Canyon is providing ten Saturn-class buses total, with the remaining nine expected to ship later in the year. The buses are BCT’s first flight units utilizing its new Kyber Electrical Power System and Hyperion Solar Arrays. Each bus includes advanced electric propulsion, a robust power system, command and data handling, radio frequency communications and dedicated payload interfaces capable of hosting several different Department of Defense payloads.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

MOJAVE, Calif., September 6, 2022 — Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh submitted the winning bid of $4.5 million to acquire the assets of bankrupt Masten Space Systems, beating out two other bidders, according to court documents.

The $4.5 million payment will be provided in cash “plus a waiver of Astrobotic’s unsecured claim against the Debtor’s estate, plus the payment of all costs relating to any contracts Astrobotic may take by assignment,” according to the transcript of a hearing held on Tuesday in Delaware Bankruptcy Court.