Entrepreneurship

Blue Origin announced that the sixth crew member to join New Shepard’s 20th mission will be New Shepard Senior Director and Chief Architect, Gary Lai. He joins Marty Allen, husband and wife duo Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and Dr. George Nield. Lai will be replacing Pete Davidson, who is no longer able to fly to the edge of space this time.

Defense products and technologies provider Leonardo DRS, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Global Enterprise Solutions (GES) business to connectivity provider SES, for US $450 million. The transaction has already been approved by the board of directors of both companies. 

Satellite-based infrastructure monitoring solutions provider LiveEO is now a certified Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partner in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN), LivEO announced. AWS ISV is aimed at businesses providing software solutions that run on AWS or are integrated with it.

Low Earth orbit satellite communications company OneWeb, announced it entered into an agreement with SpaceX to resume OneWeb’s satellite launch programme. The terms of the agreement are confidential. The first launch is scheduled for this year, adding to OneWeb’s 428-satellite in-orbit constellation, which makes up 66% of the fleet.

Germany based Rivada Space Networks, a new company launching a constellation of 600 Ka-band low Earth orbit communications satellites, will be debuting the company’s system at Satellite 2022 in Washington DC.  Rivada Space was founded by U.S. wireless communications innovator Rivada Networks.

Australian launch service provider Southern Launch, and not-for-profit organisation for the advancement of the engineering field within Australia, Engineers Australia, have signed a service level agreement to boost the careers of the company’s engineering team.

A sleepy silence falls over most of the bus, as it ventures along the Swiss streets towards Zurich. Today, on the final day of module 1, we had the honor of visiting Thales Alenia Space and Beyond Gravity, formerly known as RUAG Space. Thales Alenia Space is a Franco-Italian aerospace manufacturer specializing in the space industry.

How do you get from space technologies to Zara’s successful fast fashion? By discussing business models of course! The focus of today was discussing business models alongside their importance and looking at various factors that contribute to making a successful business. The course was very interactive today as we worked on different business models through interactive activities

The German Bundeswehr (Federal Defense) has awarded Polaris a contract to build and flight-test a scaled demonstrator of its Aurora space launch and hypersonic system, Polaris reported. The vehicle is a downscaled version of the future spaceplane powered by a reusable liquid-fuel rocket engine.

The first lecture sent us off into the coffee break with an imagination exercise - with unlimited access, what would we do or build in space to have a positive environmental impact. After a divide between unbridled imagination (I count myself to this optimistic group) and feasibility-focussed approach some interesting ideas were forged.