Launch

On Black Friday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sent an anxious email to his company’s employees, urging them to work over the weekend on SpaceX’s Raptor engine line and describing the production situation as a “crisis.” In the email, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, Musk argued that the company faces a “genuine risk...

California-based rocket startup Astra Space became the latest private launch company to reach orbit this weekend, after it successfully launched its Rocket 3.3 vehicle from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The launch took place shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern U.S. time on Saturday. The mission, dubbed ‘LV0007,’ was the first launch since...

Rocket Lab deployed two satellites for BlackSky in its latest launch, and recovered the first stage of the Electron rocket afterward.  The mission, dubbed ‘Love At First Insight,’ took off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula at 1:38 UTC on Thursday. Electron delivered the two BlackSky satellites to a circular 430 km...

Arianespace launched three French military satellites on Tuesday morning in its 12th launch of the year. A Vega rocket took off from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on Tuesday at 6:27 am local time, and orbited three CERES satellites.  The CERES satellites were developed for the French armed forces and built by contractor...

Virgin Orbit has signed an MoU with the holding company of Japan’s largest airline that paves the way for 20 LauncherOne flights from Japan.  On Nov. 4, Virgin Orbit announced the MoU with ANA Holdings, the owners of Japan’s largest airline, All Nippon Airways (ANA), which will procure 20 flights of the LauncherOne rocket and...

Firefly Aerospace has renamed its subsidiary that serves government customers and hired former U.S. Air Force Colonel Jason Mello to lead it. Mello will join as president of Firefly Space Transport Services (STS), formerly known as Firefly Black, located in Washington D.C.  The company said that subsidiary Firefly STS will “serve as the primary business...

Amazon plans to launch its first two prototype satellites for the Project Kuiper constellation with ABL Space Systems in the fourth quarter of 2022, the company announced Monday.  Amazon has signed a multi-launch agreement with ABL Space Systems, which is developing the RS1 rocket, for launches from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Financial...

Smallsat launcher in development ABL Space Systems has closed a $200 million expansion of its Series B investment round raising the company’s valuation from $1.3 billion to $2.4 billion. The company initially raised $170 million in a Series B funding round this past March. This reported valuation as a private company puts it above publicly...

EnduroSat has signed a launch contract with Isar Aerospace, a German smallsat launcher in development, to launch its satellites on rideshare missions between 2022 and 2025. Financial terms of the deal and the specific number of launches were not disclosed in the Monday announcement.  EnduroSat is based in Bulgaria, and offers Shared Satellite Service, in...

The newest SES satellite SES-17 is on the way to its final placement in Geostationary Orbit (GEO) after a successful launch by Arianespace over the weekend.  Arianespace launched SES-17 on Sunday, Oct. 24 on an Ariane 5 rocket from the Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 11:10 pm local time. The satellite will reach...