Satellite Launch Business

Another SpaceX rideshare passenger last week was Tiger-2, a commercial 5G Internet of Things (IoT) satellite built and owned by 5G OQ Technology, a startup based in Luxembourg. Tiger-2 was successfully launched – together with 87 other satellites – aboard the SpaceX Transporter-2 rideshare mission, OQ said.

Space Race number one: The founder of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson, will be his own first passenger and fly into space aboard his Virgin’s SpaceShipTwo (VSS) this week, on 11 July. Branson thus seems to be ready to beat Jeff Bezos who announced that he would get on board his Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, together with his brother Mark, for a flight on 20 July.

Update from the launch front: 29 out of the 88 satellites that SpaceX launched in its Transponder-2 mission were sharing the ride through Exolaunch, another 3 are from the European Space Agency (ESA), Exolaunch and ESA said, while OneWeb launched 36 more satellite for its internet constellation on a Soyuz rocket commercialized by Arianespace from Vostochny in Siberia.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Joint Air Power Competence Centre, we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “The Role of Space Domain Awareness” by Captain Alessio Di Mare, originally published on the Joint Air Power Competence Centre website.

Only five months after it reached space in a test flight, Virgin Orbit successfully launched its first commercial mission, the company said. The mission called “Tubular Bells: Part One” was launched from Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747, the “Cosmic Girl”, and with a two-stage rocket called LauncherOne

The Shetland Space Centre is changing its name to SaxaVord Spaceport, the center said. The rocket launch site and ground station, located in the UK’s most northerly island of Unst, Shetland, is the designated site of next year’s UK Pathfinder launch by Lockheed Martin and ABL Systems.

Rocket Factory Augsburg opened an office in Portugal near Porto, to increase its European footprint, the company said. With the inauguration of its Portugal offices, RFA signed a cooperation agreement with AICEP, the Portuguese Trade & Investment Agency, RFA said.

The Australian launch services company Gilmour Space Technologies has secured a Series C funding round of €39 million from global investors, the company announced, bringing the company’s total funds raised to date to 87 million Australian dollars (€54 million), it said.

Airbus will place a dedicated Ultra High Frequency (UHF) military payload onboard Eutelsat’s 36D satellite to serve Europe’s and NATO’s armed forces, Airbus said. Military UHF satcoms are used by the armed forces for operations on land, at sea and in the air, Airbus said.

The LEO operator OneWeb received a $500 million injection from its large shareholder Bharti, totalling its secured funding to $2.4 billion, the company said. Bharti exercised a call option under the existing shareholders’ agreement to invest an additional $500 million, and will then hold 38.6% of the company, it said.