Entrepreneurship

In this Space Café Radio -  SpaceWatch.Global publisher Torsten Kriening spoke with Lynn Zoenen, Principal at Alpine Space Ventures at the 19th ESA Investment Forum 2022 in Berlin on Space Investments in Europe. The ESA Investor Forum is a high-profile event for space-related investment opportunities and connects start-ups and scale-ups from the ESA network with European investors.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the selection of the 2022 AWS Space Accelerator’s 10 participants. The finalists were judged based on the innovative and unique nature of the projects, the overall value to the space industry, the creative application of AWS technology, and the team’s ability to deliver on an identified opportunity, AWS stated.

SpaceX has launched the Transporter-5 rideshare mission carrying several dozen payloads to low Earth and sun-synchronous orbits. This time the first stage touched down at Landing Zone-1 at Cape Canaveral. This was the eighth launch of booster 1061 and the one-hundredth launch of a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket.

SpaceWatch.Global is pleased to present: The Space Cafe Podcast #55 Moriba Jah, Privateer - Clean up minds to clean up space. Episode 055 features a special guest: Moriba Jah. Moriba Jah is a tireless fighter for a space without the junk. Every day though his visions threaten to become more distant.

High-resolution greenhouse gas monitoring company GHGSat, has joined ESA’s prestigious Third Party Mission Programme, ESA said. The company will share data from its fleet of commercial satellites with Earth science and climate change researchers free of charge.

ESA has confirmed after a thorough review process that the preliminary design of the Airbus-built Copernicus Polar Ice and Snow Topography Altimetry mission CRISTAL, meets all system requirements, Airbus said. CRISTAL will measure sea ice thickness and ice sheet elevations with the help of a multi-frequency altimeter.

Satellite-driven monitoring and natural catastrophe solutions company ICEYE, announced they are starting a pilot activity with the European Space Agency (ESA) to support the Copernicus Emergency Management Services (CEMS) team with flood insights. Under the programme, ICEYE will deliver critical flood impact information for CEMS to evaluate the data and explore potential applications.

SpaceX is launching a new round of funding, aiming for US $1.725 billion at US $70 per share, bringing the company’s valuation to US $127 billion, CNBC reported. SpaceX remains a private company even over 20 years after its founding. SpaceX is holding a secondary sale to company insiders and existing shareholders as well, for up to US $750 million.

This is Part 1 of a review of Space Resources Week 2022, the descriptive part. Part 2 may appear in a subsequent edition with the author’s more personal views on several space resource utilization topics in the context of SRW. We recently attended online the 2022 hybrid 4th edition of Space Resources Week, held in Luxembourg from May 3 to 5.

The Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft reached the intended orbit and continues to perform nominally on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) after a successful launch atop United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket. The spacecraft is expected to dock with the space station’s Boeing-built module after a 24-hour journey.