North America

NASA, conjoined with the U.S. Army and Navy, continues backing university research into future technologies for helicopters and other vertical lift aircraft. NASA has designated academic teams as Vertical Lift Research Centers of Excellence (VLRCOE). The teams are led by colleges in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Maryland.

The lunar cargo startup Intuitive Machines will launch its third Moon mission (IM-3) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and continues "to build a cislunar economy”, the company said. “By expanding on Intuitive Machines’ capability developed through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, we can offer an annual launch cadence,” Intuitive Machines said.

The private equity firm AE Industrial Partners (AEI) partners with Boeing to manage and increase its HorizonX venture capital fund. The partnership will focus on early-stage minority equity investments in "businesses that will transform the future of space, mobility, industrial tech, connectivity and digital solutions with an emphasis on sustainability", AEI said.

More than ever before, the promise and potential in space is available to those with the ambition to reach for it. Nowhere is this story more exciting and compelling than in Africa. Considering the goals and priorities detailed in the African Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063, the socio-economic and professional development many African nations seek can be facilitated and accelerated by space activities.

Solar Orbiter is the ESA/NASA mission launched on February 10, 2020, meant to observe the polar regions of the Sundown to 0.28 AU distance (42 million kilometres). It carries 10 instruments to investigate how our Star generates and controls the heliosphere. 

SpaceX has acquired the low-cost nano-satellite startup Swarm Technologies, filings to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) showed. Swarm Technologies operates “the world´s lowest cost two-way satellite communications network”, as the company says, with sandwich-sized satellites and “out-of-the-box” satellite kits and modems.

The space-based data and analytics provider Spire Global will provide radio occultation satellite data to Eumetsat, the company said. Eumetsat, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites – is a satellite agency which gathers, and gives access to, accurate and reliable satellite data on weather, climate, and the environment.

Planet announced having signed a multi-year, multi-launch agreement with SpaceX. This means that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 will be launching Planet’s satellites through the end of 2025. The news comes after Planet entered into a definitive merger agreement with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV last month to become a publicly-traded company.

NASA is recruiting its first crew members for their one-year analog mission based at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The analog, planned to launch in autumn 2022 will simulate life on a distant planet. NASA is planning to conduct research to prevent and resolve potential problems that could arise during future manned missions to the Moon and Mars.

0-G Launch is providing “ground-breaking airborne platforms” to allow the space industry to “test and accelerate its technological developments,” said Robert Feierbach, CEO & COO of 0-G Launch. With Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic recently validating commercial space travel and with the space industry growing into a forecasted 1 trillion USD business in the next decade, cheaper platforms