Spanish satellite launcher, PLD Space, announced it has closed a Series B funding round of US $28M through the co-investment initiative of Innvierte program. The operation was led by Arcano Partners, Aciturri and the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI).

Russia launched its third successful demonstration flight of the Angara A5 rocket on Monday, however, its Persei upper stage suffered a failure, NASA Spaceflight reported. This was the final launch needed to enter operational status, although further tests might be needed prior to operations.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it needed two more months to complete the environmental review of SpaceX Starship orbital launches from the Boca Chica facility in Texas. The FAA was unable to meet the original deadline of 31st December due to the high volume of comments submitted.

The US $10B space observatory has flown beyond the orbit of the Moon after completing the second of the three required mid-course correction burns, NASA reported. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched on Christmas Day to begin its 29-day deployment process. About half an hour later, it automatically deployed its solar panel to start generating its own power.

Satellites from SpaceX’s Starlink Internet Services had two "close encounters" with the Chinese space station in July and October, according to a document submitted by China to the UN's space agency. The China Space Station had to take “preventive collision avoidance control” measures to avoid colliding with the satellites.

Two Shenzhou-13 astronauts conducted a six-hour spacewalk on Sunday to install equipment outside Tiangong space station’s Tianhe module, the China Manned Space Agency reported. This was the fourth spacewalk conducted since the launch of the Tianhe core module in April this year.

A Soyuz-2.1b rocket equipped with the Fregat upper stage is to launch 36 OneWeb communications satellites later today from the Baikonur spaceport, Roscosmos reported. The deployment of the new spacecraft will increase the number of satellites in the cluster to 394.

Virgin Orbit partners with Horizon Technologies, takes an equity stake in it and becomes its preferred launch provider, the company said. Horizon wants to expand its Amber constellation and its space-based marine intelligence services with the help of Virgin Orbit´s LauncherOne.

During a recent core stage power test of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft engineers identified an issue with one of the RS-25 engine flight controllers, NASA reported. The issue will cause delays in the launch of the Artemis I mission. The flight controller communicates with SLS, provides precision control as well as internal health diagnostics.

GomSpace announced they have signed a contract to establish a next generation satellite platform for Unseenlabs. The contract value is almost €777,000. The project is expected to be complete by August next year. The new platform will comprise an upgrade both in size and performance compared to previous GomSpace-built satellites.