Featured Stories

The world of commercial space exploration is in its early stages and likely to see significant progress over the next decade. One European venture, The Exploration Company (TEC), aims to be a leader here. The company designs spacecraft and produces space capsules. Its first small capsule, Bikini, will soon launch on the inaugural Ariane 6...

Amazon is pushing back the first full launch for its Project Kuiper constellation to the fourth quarter of 2024, the company announced Thursday. Amazon previously said it would start launching the constellation in the first half of this year and to start customer pilots this year as well.  Amazon said the timeline of customer pilots...

Recently at Cal Poly, we released a 95-page report on outer space cyberattacks, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. As the first of its kind, it explains not only what is driving this growing problem, but also how to anticipate novel scenarios to avoid being taken by surprise. Here are the 10 top findings from...

Throughout history, transformative infrastructure projects such as electrical grids, rail networks, and telecommunications networks, such as the internet, have often been catalyzed by a small group of pioneers. Companies like Westinghouse, Siemens, General Electric and AT&T propelled industrial progress through rapid scale-up and capital investment concentrated in key areas of the value chain. Much of...

The satellite Earth Observation (EO) industry has seen huge advances in technologies in recent years. As the fight against climate change becomes ever more real, the role of satellite companies will be ever more important. However, it is a crowded market, with many companies looking to carve out a niche. At the inaugural Earth Observation...

In 2024, broadband connectivity is nothing short of survival. That’s why Argentine satellite internet provider Orbith is on a mission to ensure that every individual and business in Latin America has access to affordable, high-speed internet. The company recently announced its partnership with Astranis for a MicroGEO satellite to launch in 2025, and hopes to bring the...

After years of the satellite industry’s top brass making the case for consolidation, those dreams are finally playing out across the top operators. While Viasat was the first to take the leap with its Inmarsat bid, much of the industry has since followed suit. When the acquisition closed last summer, the Carlsbad, California-based business was preparing...

With the approaching retirement of the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has contracted several commercial companies to develop orbital facilities that will fulfill the need for a wide range of research and business activities in space. In this episode of the On Orbit Future Space Economy series, we focus on NASA’s three contracted space station development...

NASA wants to play a key role alongside the commercial satellite industry to use satellite technology to help avert the climate crisis. In a recent keynote at the Earth Observation Summit in London, Dalia Kirschbaum, director of the Earth Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said that NASA wants to help create an integrated...

Rocket Lab reached the milestone of 50 Electron launches on Thursday with a mission for French IoT startup Kinéis. The launcher reached 50 Electron launches seven years after the first flight, which Rocket Lab notes is faster than any other commercially developed rocket in history, even the Falcon 9.   The mission, named ‘No Time...