Tag Archives: New 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.

ICEYE, the Finnish Earth observation company creating the world's largest synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite constellation, confirmed on 8 November 2018 that it is launching the company's second SAR satellite, ICEYE-X2, into low Earth orbit on Spaceflight's SSO-A: SmallSat Express mission.

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.

Rocket Lab has continued the success of its 2018 orbital launch program with the launch of seven payloads to orbit on 11 November 2018. The mission, named ‘It’s Business Time,’ marks Rocket Lab’s second successful orbital launch and deployment of customer satellites.

Following revelations in September 2018 by French defence minister Florence Parly that Russian reconnaissance satellites had maneuvered close to the Athena-Fidus Franco-Italian communications satellite in 2017 in a suspected act of espionage, the French Joint Space Command and the Ministry of Defence are preparing a space defence strategy that will be submitted to President Emmanuel Macron for his approval by the end of 2018.

Spaceflight, a satellite rideshare and mission management company, has announced that it will launch twelve satellites on board an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) later in November 2018, to include a satellite for Australian New Space company Fleet Space Technologies, who are having two satellites launched this coming week from New Zealand by Rocket Lab.

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.

Taiwanese New Space company Odysseus is set to relocate to Luxembourg from its home base in Tainan, Taiwan, after winning a U.S.$570,000 prize from the Luxembourg Space Agency, following the company's first-place finish in the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Resources Challenge.