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.

Virgin Orbit’s decision to initiative a week-long pause in its operations starting Thursday has left more than 600 employees in California on unpaid furloughs wondering if they still have jobs while the cash-strapped company seeks funding to continue launching satellites.

WASHINGTON — During a panel discussion at Satellite 2023 Conference on Wednesday afternoon, United Launch Alliance (ULA) CEO Tory Bruno predicted there would be a shake out among small launch providers over the next 24 months that could leave only one or two companies standing. CNBC reports that process might have already begun earlier in the day with Richard Branson’s struggling launch provider.

Richard Branson has put another $5 million into Virgin Orbit (NAS: VORB) this week, raising to $60 million the amount the billionaire has put into the struggling launch provider over the past four months.

Virgin Orbit has said that a dislodged fuel filter caused the failure of a LauncherOne flight with nine payloads aboard last month. According to the company’s update:

Welcome this week’s S-SPACⁱ.

Intuitive Machines (NAS: LUNR) debuted on the NASDAQ exchange on Tuesday after the company received only a fraction of the amount it had planned to raise by merging with the Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Japan is set to launch its H3 rocket for the first time and a trio of spacecraft are headed to the International Space Station (ISS) in the weeks ahead. India is also hoping the second launch of its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) will succeed where the first failed.

Virgin Orbit (NAS: VORB) has received an additional $10 million from Virgin Investments Limited (VIL), raising to $55 million the amount the investment group has pumped into the struggling launch provider over the past three months.

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.

Welcome to S-SPACⁱ.

This week BigBear.ai sells more stock, management is shaken up at three space SPACs, Momentus signs a contract with FOSSA, Planet Labs teams with NASA to mitigate global food shortages, and Virgin Orbit’s price target gets cut in half after launch failure.