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This Space Café BeNeLux will feature Simon van den Dries, General Manager at Spire Maritime, in conversation with Chiara Moenter, co-founder “SDG18 – Space for All” and her co-host of Space Cafe BeNeLux, Bano Barzingi. A Better Future through Space - Data is a tremendously important part of our world ...

This Space Café WebTalk will feature Prof. Kazuto Suzuki , Professor of Science and Technology Policy, Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo, Japan, in conversation with Torsten Kriening, publisher of SpaceWatch.Global. Space Policy in Japan – the new challenge for setting international norms

In this edition of Space Café Australia, host Annie Handmer speaks with Dr Tim Parsons about where NewSpace fits within a broader social history of technological development, and how Space changes the way we see ourselves and our place on Planet Earth.

The Californian startup LeoLabs has closed a $65 million Series B financing round, led by Insight Partners and existing investor Velvet Sea Ventures. With this round, LeoLabs has raised over $100 million in total capital, the company said. LeoLabs provides commercial low Earth orbit (LEO) mapping and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) services.

The Chinese rocket company CAS Space started to develop what it expects will be "the world's most powerful solid-propellant carrier rocket", the company's chairman told China Daily. Yang Yiqiang, a senior rocket scientist and founder of CAS Space, told China Daily that the rocket - ZK 2 - will be ready for its debut flight before the end of 2022.

The International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS) will send its bioastronautics researcher Kellie Gerardi to space on a dedicated research mission with Virgin Galactic, the institute said. “The contract marks the world’s first industry-sponsored, human-tended research spaceflight on a commercial vehicle”.

As part of its Discovery program, NASA has selected two new missions to Venus, Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor, the agency said. NASA is awarding approximately $500 million per mission; they are expected to launch in the 2028-2030 timeframe, NASA said.

Axiom Space signed up for three additional private crew missions to the International Space Station (ISS) with SpaceX, the company said. The missions – Ax-2, 3, and 4 – will take place on a SpaceX Dragon until 2023, Axiom said. The landmark agreement between the two companies

May 2021 saw over US$600 million raised in private fundraising for space-related companies. More than two-thirds of this amount comes from the announcement of another SPAC merger, this time with quantum key distribution company ArQit (as before, this amount assumes cash in trust, PIPE, no redemptions/repayments, and is before fees).

In this week’s Space Café WebTalk Prof. Thomas Schildknecht, Director of Swiss Optical Ground Station and Geodynamics Observatory Zimmerwald and Vice-Director of Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern, Switzerland, talked about Sustainability beyond (our) planet protection from the perspective of an astronomer.