Technology multinational GMV announced it has been awarded a new contract by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), for the provision of operational optical data services to support the flight dynamics operations of its fleet of Meteosat satellites. The nominal duration of the contract is 3 years with 2 optional yearly extensions.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Orbital Gateway Consulting we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Dongfang Hour China Aerospace News Roundup 10 - 16 January 2022 ”. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Space News Roundup! I’m Jean Deville, joined as always by my co-host Blaine Curcio.

South-Korean Innospace and Norwegian Andøya Space signed a Memorandum of Understanding to launch into polar and sun-synchronous orbit from Norway, Andøya Space announced. Established in 2017, Innospace provides manufacturing and engineering services for aerospace and defence contractors.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Orbital Gateway Consulting we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Dongfang Hour China Space News Roundup, 2021 Top Trends and Events”.

2021 finished strong, with another SPAC merger with a space-related (albeit not originally a space) company (Tomorrow.io), more fundraising by SpaceX, a few major private rounds, a couple of investments by Virgin Orbit (and hence yet further examples of a de-SPAC’d company deploying part of its cash towards investments) and even a small IPO (Sidus).

The U.S. committed to extend the operations of the International Space Station (ISS) through 2030, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced. The Biden-Harris Administration wants to continue to work with its international partners “to enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory through the rest of this decade”.

No SPAC mergers with space companies in November, but a blockbuster round of US$1.4 billion for Sierra Space. We also had ‘traditional’ public listings by Telesat and Mynaric (of ADSs). It was also an interesting month on the M&A front with deals including Redwire / Techshot, Inmarsat / Viasat, Planet / VanderSat, and Rocket Lab / Planetary Systems Corp

Rocket Lab announced it has signed a deal with Japanese Earth imaging company Synspective to carry out three Electron launches. The missions are dedicated to Synspective which means that the StriX satellites will be the only payload, giving the company control over launch schedule. Last year, Rocket Lab launched ‘The Owl’s Night Begins’ mission

The in-orbit servicer Astroscale raised another $109 million from different investors, bringing the total capital raised to date to $300 million, the Japanese space company said. The Series F round was the “largest funding round in the company’s history”, as Astroscale says.

ICEYE announced having signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on developing advanced SAR products. The collaboration builds on G42’s recent agreement with Yahsat to develop a geospatial data fusion of different sensor modalities. Finnish Synthetic-Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite and analytics provider, ICEYE