by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Loren Grush at The Verge reports on an open letter being circulated within SpaceX that calls upon the company to “publicly address and condemn” CEO and Founder Elon Musk’s “harmful Twitter behavior. SpaceX must swiftly and explicitly separate itself from Elon’s personal brand.”

“Elon’s behavior in the public sphere is a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for us, particularly in recent weeks. As our CEO and most prominent spokesperson, Elon is seen as the face of SpaceX—every Tweet that Elon sends is a de facto public statement by the company. It is critical to make clear to our teams and to our potential talent pool that his messaging does not reflect our work, our mission, or our values,” the letter said.

The letter calls for equal enforcement of SpaceX’s “zero tolerance” policy on sexual harassment. The call comes amid claims made by a former employee that sexual harassment is rife within the company, and a published report by Insider that alleged SpaceX paid a $250,000 severance to a company flight attendant after a naked Musk exposed his erect penis to her during a flight on a corporate jet. Musk and SpaceX officials denied the billionaire exposed himself.

REDMOND, Wash., March 15, 2022 (Kymeta PR) – Kymeta, a world leading company for flat panel antennas that make mobile global, announced today the closing of additional equity funding totaling approximately $84 million, led by Bill Gates and participation by Hanwha Systems, among other investors.

The multi-million-dollar investment will be used to drive Kymeta’s innovations forward, accelerate the production of its innovative electronically-steered flat panel technology and further evolve the company’s growth as it prepares to expand our offerings for LEO and defense customers. With this financing, the company is also nearing fully funded and will allow Kymeta to expand its manufacturing capacity to meet increasing customer demand for Kymeta’s flat panel antennas while continuing to evolve the u8 product line in the Ku-band as well as bring the same complete product family into the Ka-band in the future.

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Astra Space has applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the launch more than 13,000 communications satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO), joining SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon and other companies seeking to provide broadband services across the globe. The application brings the number of proposed satellites in these constellations to more than 79,000.

“The Astra Constellation as proposed would ultimately consist of as many as 13,620 operational LEO satellites, supported by a global network of gateway earth stations utilizing the identified V-band frequency bands for feeder links for space-to-earth transmit and receive,” the company’s application said.

Wall Street’s latest easy money craze has attracted a growing number of space companies. But, just because they can go public, should they?

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Seven space companies have gotten caught up in the SPACovirus sweeping through Wall Street. The impact on the space industry is going to be interesting to watch.

A SPAC is a special purpose acquisition company. It’s a publicly traded investment firm that, with outside investors, acquires or merges with another company, and then takes the acquisition public under its own name.

Global Communications Company, Kymeta Corporation, to Aggressively Accelerate New Product Development and Commercialization for Satellite and Cellular Communications Globally for the Next Generation Electronically Steered Flat Panel Antenna and Kymeta Connect™ Services.

REDMOND, Wa,, August 25, 2020 (Kymeta PR) — Kymeta Corporation (www.kymetacorp.com), the communications company making mobile global — is excited to announce the recapitalization of the company along with the successful funding raise of approximately $85 million, led by Bill Gates with members of the leadership team personally investing approximately $1 million led by Executive Chairman, Doug Hutcheson.

Greg Wyler of OneWeb

BELLEVUE, Wash. (EarthNow PR) — EarthNow LLC announces intent to deploy a large constellation of advanced imaging satellites that will deliver real-time, continuous video of almost anywhere on Earth. The latest company to spin-out from Intellectual Ventures, EarthNow recently closed a first round of financing with investments from Airbus, the SoftBank Group, Bill Gates, and Greg Wyler. The initial funding focuses primarily on maturing the overall system design to deliver innovative and unique real-time Earth observation services.

According to EarthNow’s founder and CEO, Russell Hannigan, “EarthNow is ambitious and unprecedented, but our objective is simple; we want to connect you visually with Earth in real-time. We believe the ability to see and understand the Earth live and unfiltered will help all of us better appreciate and ultimately care for our one and only home.”

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Space tourism is nigh, but a new space age is not Crosscut.com In a thought-provoking essay, Robert Fortner takes a look at the limitations of SpaceShipTwo as well as the divergent paths of Microsoft co-founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Allen is a major force behind space tourism, while Gates is focused on more down-to-Earth concerns. “The space evangelists seek to transcend the present and this earth in an almost […]