
Weekly Recap #59 with Guest Grant Schmaedick
Main Topics This week we’re excited to be joined by guest co-host Grant Schmaedick, and get his perspective from years of working in space at Loft, Lunar Outpost, and Lockheed! Communications * Viasat, SES, and Astranis awarded a combined $1.07B for NASA’s TDRS replacement program for $460.9M, $340.4M, and $264.3M respectively. [source] * CesiumAstro closed a $730M Series D led by Janus Henerson to value the company at $4.5B, this money will be used to deploy their Synchronicity communications constellation. [source] * AST SpaceMobile announced a plan to build their own rocket with Firefly’s Miranda and Vira engines in a deal worth up to $1.3B. [source] * SES successfully connected to meoSphere from Earth with optical communications onboard K2 Space’s Gravitas. [source] * Open Cosmos’ Ka-band license was updated to a limit of 52 instead of 192 as deployment lags behind initial timeline. [source] * Momentus manifested OQ Technologies on Vigoride 9 for testing of 5G communications payload. [source] Space Mobility * Tumbleweed raised a $7.7M Seed round led by Pact VC for their Oasis Beta reentry vehicle. [source] * Redwire won a $20M DARPA contract for a scaled-down flight of SabreSat VLEO spacecraft. [source] * Starfish Space’s Otter spacecraft suffered a communication loss, ending the $15M NASA satellite inspection mission. [source] * Stellar Alpina unveiled their rotating detonation rocket engine orbital transfer vehicle named Monarch, and lunar lander named Morpho. [source] Imaging * Hydrosat unveiled their Nyktos mid-wave infrared imager as part of the Osiris constellation. [source] * Simera Sense and Spacemanic announced a collaboration on dual use imaging satellites. [source] * Oman Lens signed an agreement for joint development of a 20 satellite AI powered imaging constellation from Chinese ODC company STAR.VISION. [source] * Skyfi integrated imaging data into an agent app on Robinhood for subscription based insights on public companies. [source] Business Moves * Lockheed Martin awarded a $95M GPS IIIF modification from USSF, increasing contract value to $4.73B [source] * LeoLabs provided a $150M loan from DoD to scale SDA radar stations. [source] * LUNR (TSX:FLY) listed on the Canadian stock exchange to fund development of orbital launch vehicles. [source] * Orca sold autonomy software to orbital data center company Orbital in a deal worth up to $20M. [source] Tech Advances * Airbus released their Detumbler product to passively detumble spacecraft at end of life. [source] * Orbital Matter and Endurosat partnered to construct 5KW solar arrays on-orbit. [source] Get full access to Space Times at spacetimespod.substack.com/subscribe
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