North America

The Venture Capital fund Seraphim prepares a flotation at the London Stock Exchange, Sky News reported. The “world's first dedicated space VC fund” is working with banks on plans for a London flotation”, Sky News said. An arm of Seraphim Capital is working with bankers on plans for a public share sale that could raise in the region of £250m, the news channel said.

The U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF) studies the use of large commercial rockets for military cargo missions. DAF’s fourth Vanguard program will focus on rocket cargo solutions and investigate the use of large commercial launchers for Pentagon logistics missions, DAF said.

The weather platform Climavision raised $100 million from TPG’s The Rise Fund, the fund announced. The San Francisco-based Rise Fund announced a $100 million strategic investment in Climavision, a pioneering weather services and intelligence platform powered by a private network of high-resolution radars, GPS-RO data, and proprietary software.

This Space Café Canada will feature Tim Kopra, Vice President of Robotics and Space Operations at MDA, one of Canada’s most successful space technology companies, in conversation with Dr. Jessica West, Senior Researcher at Project Ploughshares and a friend of SpaceWatch.Global.

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 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).

The giant James Webb Space Telescope is on Arianespace’s launch manifest for the fourth quarter of this year, officials from the European launcher and the U.S. space agency said. The telescope could be shipped from the U.S. to French Guiana late August, Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s science mission director, said at a virtual press briefing and mission update.