The seven launches successfully conducted last week were overshadowed by the decision by cash-strapped Virgin Orbit to pause operations for seven days and furlough nearly its entire staff.

Japan’s new H3 rocket failed in flight last week, OneWeb moved within one launch of providing global broadband service, and Relativity Space’s Terran 1 failed to get off the launch pad.

SpaceX scrubbed the launch of a fresh crew to the International Space Station (ISS) early Monday morning with 2 minutes 30 second left in the countdown. The scrub came 24 hours after an empty Russian Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the station to replace one that suffered damage in December.

Japan’s new rocket fizzled on the pad last week as the United States and Russia prepared for key launches this week to the International Space Station (ISS).

This is turning out to be a particularly busy year for flights to the moon, with commercial companies and universities taking leading roles. Let’s look at the status of spacecraft that are at, headed for, or being prepared for launch to our nearest celestial neighbor.

Bryce Tech has released an in depth look at how small satellites have become an extremely big business over the past decade.

Also news about Airbus, Synspective, Insight Terra and Xplore

Embedded Ventures $100 Million Fund

Los Angeles-based Embedded Ventures has launched a $100 million fund to provide venture capital to commercial and national security companies, with a particular focus on the space sector.

Rocket Lab is scheduled to launch its Electron rocket from U.S. soil for the first time on Tuesday. The window for the launch three signal collection satellites for HawkEye 360 from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) in Virginia runs from 6-8 pm EST (23:00-01:00 UTC). The company will webcast the launch on YouTube.

While the first week of 2023 saw only one launch worldwide, things will get a lot busier in week 2. Virgin Orbit is set to conduct its first launch from the UK, ABL Space hopes to launch its first rocket ever, and SpaceX and China have three launches apiece on their manifests.

Happy New Year to all and welcome to the first S-SPACⁱ of 2023.

SpaceX started off the year with a boom on Tuesday with the launch of its Transporter-6 rideshare mission from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The Falcon 9 first stage booster touched down on land instead of an off-shore drone ship, sending a sonic boom echoing across the Sunshine State.