Space

SPACEBEL has announced a contract with OHB Italia S.p.A. (Milano), the prime contractor of the Comet Interceptor mission, a European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) program.  As a result of the contract, SPACEBEL will provide the Central Software that manages the whole spacecraft, its platform equipment and its payload instruments. This new project will involve a team of up to ten SPACEBEL engineers over the next two years.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is scaling back its activities around the Mars Return Sample mission in anticipation of potential budgetary cuts to the program in light of the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill. According to JPL director Laurie Leshin, NASA is anticipating a federal budget that could limit spending on the Mars Sample Return mission at $300 million for the 2024 fiscal year, 36% of the previous year’s $ 822 million budget.

In response to escalating natural disasters impacting remote communities across the Asia-Pacific region, Kacific has introduced the new and enhanced CommsBox – CommsBox Ultra to redefine emergency preparedness and response capabilities in high-risk areas. This introduction expands Kacific's range of disaster communication products, offering an enhanced version alongside the existing and trusted CommsBox.

Space Product and Innovation S.r.l (SPiN), a provider of modular space manufacturing solutions, has announced the successful closure of a €1.63 million seed funding round. Galaxia, the Italian Technology Transfer Hub on Aerospace, led the round, with participation from Obloo Ventures, Scientifica Venture Capital and Innova Venture. This significant investment will propel SPiN's mission to revolutionize space manufacturing and democratize access to space.

Bellatrix Aerospace has achieved a significant milestone with the successful launch of its Rudra and Arka propulsion systems onboard ISRO’s PSLV C-58 launch vehicle on 1st January 2024. The company had earlier tested India's first privately developed Hall Effect Thruster (Arka) in 2021 and subsequently unveiled the nation's first High-Performance Green Propulsion system (Rudra) in 2022, representing significant milestones in Indian space technology.

Redwire Corporation has announced that two 5-kW Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSA) have successfully deployed and are operating nominally in geosynchronous orbit on the Maxar Space Systems-built Ovzon 3 communications satellite. The satellite successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. Ovzon 3 represents the first-ever integration of Redwire’s ROSA technology with a commercial satellite following years of successful operations on the International Space Station (ISS) and on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

Sequel to the investment agreement between Marubeni Corporation and D-Orbit from last November, D-Orbit has announced the successful first closing of its Series C funding round, raising about €100m with Marubeni Corporation leading the round. This consequently cements a long-term commercial collaboration between both parties that will potentially revolutionize the space logistics industry. Furthermore, it extends Marubeni agency mandate for D-Orbit to the entire Southeast Asia.

Voyager Space and Airbus have completed the transaction to create Starlab Space LLC, a transatlantic joint venture that will design, build, and operate the Starlab commercial space station. Alongside the joint venture execution, the Starlab team completed the station-level System Definition Review (SDR), a critical milestone assessing the technical and programmatic accountability of the program.

Sustainability reporting SaaS company Earth Blox has announced its availability on Google Cloud Marketplace. The company provides customers with a scalable and customisable platform to rapidly assess climate and nature-related risks and impacts for millions of assets and facilities worldwide. Google Cloud Marketplace lets users quickly deploy functional software packages that run on Google Cloud and allows customers to easily start up a familiar software package with services like Compute Engine or Cloud Storage, with no manual configuration required.

The schedules for Artemis II and Artemis III have been postponed to September 2025 for Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, and September 2026 for Artemis III, which is planned to land the first astronauts near the lunar South Pole, NASA announced.