Tag Archives: Commercial Space

U.S. New Space launch provider Rocket Lab has closed a Series E financing round of U.S.$140 million. The funding round closed last month, prior to the launch of the successful mission ‘It’s Business Time,’ and was led by existing investor Future Fund, with strong participation from current investors including Greenspring Associates, Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, DCVC (Data Collective), Promus Ventures and K1W1.

MzansiSat, a New Space satellite broadband company located in Stellenbosch, South Africa, is looking to launch and operate its own Geostationary orbit communications satellite, to be called MzansiSat-1, by 2022 in order to provide low-cost satellite broadband Internet across Africa in what its Chief Operating Officer, Victor Stephanopoli, calls a "patchy" telecommunications sector on the continent.

Australian New Space start-up Myriota, which focuses on providing satellite connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT), is partnering with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) to deploy marine buoys called drifters that are fitted with satellite-connected IoT sensors in order to track currents, sea surface water temperature, and barometric pressure of the ocean in real-time.

Fleet Space Technologies' first two satellites, Proxima I and II, were launched on 11 November 2018 on-board Rocket Lab's manifest, It's Business Time. This launch marks Australia's first ever commercial CubeSats in orbit.

Berlin has become a space industry hub, and a popular place for start-ups. One of those is LiveEO, a Berlin-based company that aims to offer services to enable companies to monitor large-scale infrastructure networks, using Earth observation technology. SpaceWatch.Global's Torsten Kriening spoke to Sven Przywarra, Co-Founder and COO of LiveEO, to find out more about their vision and current and future plans.

Japan's New Space scene is little known and understood outside of Tokyo, despite the emergence of some interesting startups such as iSpace and Infostellar to name just two as well as some big Japanese government announcements about supporting startups in the space sector. SpaceWatch.Global reached out to Masashi Sato, a Senior Consultant at the Nomura Research Institute Ltd. (NRI) in Tokyo and a leading expert on the Japanese space startup scene, to find out what the current state of play is and what the future holds.

The head of the Iranian Space Agency (ISA), Morteza Barari, announced in early October 2018 that three Iranian-made satellites - Payam-e Amirkabir-1, Dousti, and Nahid-1 - have been built and are ready to be launched, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

The Australian Space Agency (ASA) released its institutional charter on 29 October 2018 that will guide the agency in its efforts to develop Australian civil space capabilities and competencies, as well as establish a thriving space and satellite industrial base.

The UAE's KhalifaSat high-resolution Earth observation satellite was successfully launched into orbit on board a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) H-IIA satellite launch vehicle from Japan's Tanegashima Space Centre at 13:08hrs Japanese time (08:08hrs UAE time) on Monday, 29 October 2018.

Satellite Vu has taken the title of Best International Start-Up at the Supernova Challenge, part of the Future Stars event held during GITEX in Dubai last week. Satellite Vu, was invited to attend by the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) as part of its Innovation Challenge.