North America

Muon Space and Exolaunch have signed a multi-launch agreement (MLA) to deploy Muon Space’s first three constellation satellites during SpaceX Transporter missions. Muon Space’s first satellite, MuSat-1, launched in June via Exolaunch on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Charlie Ergen is consolidating his telecommunications empire, merging Dish Network and EchoStar, his satellite and broadband services in an all-stock deal, reports CNBC. The deal is reuniting two businesses that have been separate for about 15 years, after Ergen took EchoStar out of Dish Network in 2008. Echostar was founded in 1980, selling satellite dishes before launching its subscription satellite service in 1995. 

DCUBED, the German NewSpace hardware manufacturer, has announced that it will demonstrate in-space manufacturing as part of a demonstration mission in Q1 2024. This demonstration will represent the first time any product would undergo manufacture in free space. The demonstration will consequently see the production of a roughly 30-centimeter high, 3D-printed truss structure. Furthermore, it intends to prove the efficacy of in-space manufacturing and highlight the game-changing potential that such capabilities promise to deliver for production in orbit. 

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has announced it has signed a new launch services agreement with a confidential customer for a HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) mission. The mission will consequently launch from Complex 2 at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in 2024. The contract signing with the new customer came just days after Rocket Lab successfully launched the first HASTE mission on 17 June 2023 for Leidos under the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program.

Spire Global announced on the 8th of August that it has been awarded a Space Services contract by GHGSat, a global monitor of greenhouse gases from space. Under the agreement, Spire Global will build, launch, and operate four additional 16U satellites that will carry GHGSat payloads to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. This has been built upon Spire’s initial agreement for three 16U satellites that will launch by the end of 2023. The addition of these satellites will enhance GHGSat’s global emissions monitoring and measurement capacity

ICEYE US Inc has received its first Task Order under a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with NASA, enabling NASA to acquire ICEYE’s synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data for evaluation by scientific and academic communities. This will help to determine suitability for advancing NASA’s Earth Science research objectives. The BPA gets its funding from the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate. Since 2020, NASA’s Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program has been identifying, evaluating, and acquiring data from commercial sources that align with NASA’s Earth Science Division objectives.

Benchmark Space Systems announced on the 8th of August that it has raised $33 million in Series B funding and moved its headquarters to facilities with four times the manufacturing capacity. The funding round will enable the company to move forward with new innovations and accelerate its strategic transition from research and development to production to meet the growing demand for its non-toxic propulsion systems. The 40,000 square foot Vermont-based facility features full end-to-end delivery capability from engineering through test and integration, including hot fire chambers,...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has, through its Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA) office has announced the modification of operating licenses of multiple commercial satellite systems. These license conditions had previously restricted the operations of commercial satellites, preventing them from offering their full remote sensing capabilities to the public. On July 20, 2020, NOAA implemented new, specific regulations on private remote sensing systems.

Umbra, a space radar technology company, has announced that it has successfully produced a 16-cm resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image. According to the Company, it is the highest-resolution commercial satellite image ever released. The company also announced that it’s now able to provide customers with the highest-quality data its satellites are capable of capturing — in all formats and resolutions, including complex data better than 25 cm, for the first time.

NASA and Axiom Space have signed a mission order for the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS), marking the Houston-based company as the only full-service mission provider to carry out end-to-end commercial astronaut missions to the orbiting laboratory.