Entrepreneurship

Arianespace has been awarded a launch contract by the European Space Agency (ESA) on behalf of the European Commission, to launch Sentinel-1C in the first half of 2023 on Vega-C, Arianespace said. The 2.3-tonne satellite, will be deployed in a Sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 690 km.

SpinLaunch has signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA according to which SpinLaunch will develop, integrate, and fly a NASA payload on the company’s Suborbital Accelerator Launch System. This will provide valuable information to NASA for potential future commercial launch opportunities.

Orbit Fab and Neutron Star Systems (NSS) established a cooperative agreement for co-development of satellite refuelling solutions with green propellants, NSS said. Under the agreement the companies will combine NSS’ propellant-agnostic electric propulsion technology with Orbit Fab’s refuelling interfaces and tankers. This will enable increasing the range of refuellable propellants.

The Indian Women in Space Conference is a first-of-its-kind gender minority-focused space conference taking place virtually in India. It is headlined by WoAA (Women of Aeronautics and Astronautics) India started in August 2020. The aim of the conference is to bring together women and gender minorities from diverse backgrounds of space art, engineering, astronomy, industry,

Astroscale received a funding award from ESA who have selected the company in the UK to lead a collision-avoidance study that is part of ESA’s Collision Risk Estimation and Automated Mitigation (CREAM) activities in the Space Safety Program.  The company's UK team will partner with GMV and OneWeb to develop methods and solutions for effective collision avoidance management

Launch and space systems company Rocket Lab USA, has announced that it will attempt a mid-air helicopter capture of the Electron launch vehicle for the first time during its next launch, a commercial rideshare mission scheduled for 19th April with a 14-day launch window.

Space4Impact, EPFL’s Space Center eSpace, E2MC Ventures, and Space Innovation joined forces to launch an online course on the New Space Economy. The program is available on edX as a free EPFLx course. Learners can watch more than 30 video lectures by space experts from various domains within startups, academia, the private sector, and public institutions in Switzerland.

Digital transformation company Atos, and the European multi-national space technology company OHB, have been awarded a contract by the German Federal Office of Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-Service Support to supply the "Space Situational Awareness Center Expansion Stage 1" to the German Federal Armed Forces. 

Amazon announced it signed launch service contracts with three commercial launch companies, ArianeSpace, Blue Origin and ULA (United Launch Alliance) for 83 launches altogether over a five year period.  Arianespace will perform 18 Ariane 6 launches for Amazon’s Project Kuiper over a period of three years under the contract.

Lockheed Martin has released an open-source, non-proprietary interface to help standardize on-orbit docking. The company published the Mission Augmentation Port (MAP) interface standard online to support industry approaches to on-orbit servicing and mission augmentation, Lockheed said.