Welcome to Biz Briefs. In this edition, Maxar is going private, a consortium of aerospace heavyweights will bid for Europe’s Starlink rival, Seraphim Space selects nine companies for its next business accelerator, ESA funds a study for a reusable heavy-lift launcher, Lockheed and Raytheon teams win defense contracts, AeroVironment receives a Mars helicopter contract, CesiumAstro to provide Raytheon with antennas, NASA awarded contracts for a weather satellite, and Thales Alenia Space conducted a cybersecurity demonstration with an active satellite.

Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France (Leanspace PR) — Leanspace, the company building the digital infrastructure of the space industry, is today announcing a major milestone in its development with the closing of an oversubscribed Seed financing round of €6m ($6.4m). The funding will be used to scale up Leanspace’s cloud services platform, and was led by Karista and 42CAP, with complementary non-dilutive financing from Bpifrance. The new investors join leading space organizations already backing Leanspace, like Seraphim Space, the International Space University and strategic business angels.

The commercialization of the space industry and the ‘NewSpace’ paradigm have complexified, rather than simplified, the management of space missions. On top of the legacy requirements we’ve seen for decades: reliability, trust and bespoke developments, space programmes of today come with new needs: a drastic increase in agility and reduction of costs.

DUBLIN, Ireland (Ubotica Technologies PR) — Ubotica Technologies, the leading provider of smarts for smart satellites, closed an oversubscribed Seed round with a global syndicate led by Atlantic Bridge and including co-investment from US based Dolby Family Ventures and the world’s leading Investor in Space, Seraphim Space. Addressing major challenges by providing real-time actionable insights direct to users from space, Ubotica™ has developed the energy efficient CogniSat™ on-board processing system. This new investment includes funding for the next generation of the CogniSat platform and targeted team growth.

Announcing the funding, Fintan Buckley, Co-Founder and CEO of Ubotica Technologies, said: “We are at the heart of semi-autonomous satellite systems that provide real-time insights from flexible on-board processing and that use affordable, low energy hardware. The Ubotica CogniSat platform was developed by technology innovators with deep insight of processing hardware, computer vision software and AI system integration. CogniSat technology has already been flight proven in space projects with partners in Europe and the USA, including with NASA JPL on the International Space Station and with the European Space Agency (ESA) on Φ-Sat-1.”

LONDON (Seraphim Space PR) — Seraphim Space Manager LLP, the manager of Seraphim Space Investment Trust plc, the world’s first listed Space Tech Fund, is delighted to announce that Patrick McCall, former Senior Partner of Virgin Group, will join the company.

Patrick joins Seraphim as a Venture Partner following a long and distinguished career in the space, communication and transport sector, He worked for two decades in the senior team driving the expansion of the Virgin Group and as the Chair of Virgin Orbit and Virgin Galactic. His achievements include financing the development of Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit, culminating in the flotations of both companies. He also played a key role in agreeing the launch agreement for Virgin Orbit from the Spaceport in Cornwall later this year.

HELSINKI, Finland, February 3, 2022 (ICEYE PR) – ICEYE, a world-leading SAR data provider and expert in NatCat solutions, today announced the closing of a $136M Series D funding round, led by long-standing investor Seraphim Space. New strategic investors to ICEYE also include BAE Systems and Kajima Ventures. In addition, Molten Ventures, OTB Ventures, True Ventures, C16 Ventures, Chione Ltd, Services Group of America, the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), Space Capital and Promus Ventures have also participated in the funding round. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC served as placement agent for the transaction.

With this latest funding round, ICEYE has raised a total of $304M in financing since 2015. ICEYE owns and operates the world’s largest constellation of SAR satellites and the company has successfully launched 16 satellite missions in total since its first-ever spacecraft was placed into orbit only four years ago.

LONDON (Seraphim Space PR) — Further to its announcement on 7 September 2021, Seraphim Space Investment Trust plc (LSE: SSIT), the world’s first listed fund focused on Space Tech, is pleased to announce the acquisition of the holding of Arqit Quantum Inc. (“Arqit”) from the Seraphim Space LP ( ” Seraphim Space Fund “) .

As set out in the IPO prospectus, Seraphim Space will acquire four assets from the Seraphim Space Fund for newly issued ordinary shares in the Company. This acquisition represents the second of those transactions to complete.

Arqit is a leader in quantum encryption technology designed to eliminate the threat of cyber-attack and data theft. The business has a unique quantum encryption Platform-as-a-Service which makes the communications links of any networked device secure against current and future forms of attack – even from a quantum computer.  On 7 September, Arqit completed its proposed merger with Centricus Acquisition Corp. The combined company has been renamed Arqit Quantum Inc. and its shares have commenced trading on NASDAQ under the new ticker symbol “ARQQ” for Arqit common stock.