October 18, 2023

India's Agnikul Cosmos Raises $40 Million for Launch System (Source: Reuters)
An Indian small launch vehicle startup has raised $27 million. Agnikul Cosmos announced Tuesday it raised the Series B round from several investors, bringing the total it has raised to date to $40 million. The company is preparing to launch a suborbital demonstrator in the next two months as it works on a vehicle capable of placing up to 300 kilograms into low Earth orbit. (10/18)

Government Space Funding Blunts Impact of Declining Private Investment (Source: Space News)
Government funding for the space sector is helping blunt the impact of a decline in private investment. At a conference Tuesday, analysts said that while private investment has fallen from a peak of $12 billion in 2021, it has not declined as much as feared, leveling off at about $8 billion annually. U.S. government funding has increased at the same time, mitigating the effect of the decline, although high interest rates mean that private investment may not rebound in the near future. (10/18)

Russian Satellite Trails Others in Orbit (Source: Breaking Defense)
According to data from Slingshot Aerospace, Russia's second Luch/Olymp satellite, also known as Luch-5X or Olymp-K-2, has been observed trailing Western satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit. The behavior is considered "unfriendly" and follows a similar pattern to Russia's first Luch/Olymp satellite, which had previously raised concerns among Pentagon and allied defense officials. (10/17)

HawkEye 360 Raises $10 Million for RF Geolocation (Source: Space News)
HawkEye 360 has raised an additional $10 million for its radio-frequency geolocation services. The funding, announced Wednesday, is in the form of an extension to a $58 million Series D-1 round it announced in July. Lockheed Martin Ventures and company insiders contributed to the round. As part of this investment, HawkEye 360 and Lockheed Martin have signed a strategic cooperative agreement to develop remote sensing solutions for government and commercial customers. HawkEye 360 uses radio-frequency data collected by satellites to geolocate electronic emissions and draw insights. (10/18)

CesiumAstro Wins NASA Contract for Wideband Phased Array Terminal (Source: Space News)
CesiumAstro won a NASA contract to design a space-qualified wideband active phased array terminal. The award, valued at $396,000, covers work on a terminal able to communicate with both commercial and government satellite networks. NASA is moving toward greater reliance on commercial satellite communications, with contracts to several companies to study how commercial systems could support missions that rely on NASA networks today. (10/18)

AnySignal Developing Space Radio Platform (Source: Space News)
A startup emerging from stealth is developing a multi-purpose space radio platform. AnySignal announced this week it had raised $5 million to work on technologies that would enable communications across multiple spectrum bands and is more tightly integrated than alternative technologies. The company plans to fly its first radio on SpaceX's Transporter-9 rideshare mission in November. (10/18)

ISAC Raises Awareness of Satellite Cybersecurity (Source: Space News)
A space industry group that has been focused on cybersecurity is trying to raise awareness of other threats to spacecraft. The nonprofit Space ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) held a conference Tuesday to highlight the value of satellites as crucial infrastructure. The organization, which shares information about cybersecurity threats to satellites, said its members are also concerned about threats from anti-satellite weapons and space weather that could affect their ability to provide critical services. Space ISAC is also leading an effort to have the U.S. government designate space systems as the 17th U.S. critical infrastructure sector. (10/18)

SpiderOak Contract with SDA to Integrate Cybersecurity Into Ground Systems (Source: Space News)
Space cybersecurity firm SpiderOak has signed an agreement with the U.S. Space Development Agency. Under the agreement, in the form of an "other transaction authority" contract, SDA will study how the company's OrbitSecure software could be integrated into a military ground system to protect it from cyber threats. SpiderOak's technology is known as zero-trust cybersecurity, where all data is encrypted and the encryption keys are only known to the client. The dollar value of the agreement was not disclosed. (10/18)

SpaceX Launches Starlink Mission, Ties Florida's 2022 Launch Total (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
A Falcon 9 launch Tuesday night tied the number of launches last year from Cape Canaveral. A Falcon 9 lifted off at 8:36 p.m. Eastern and placed 22 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was the 57th this year from Florida's Eastern Range, tying the mark set last year. All but four of the launches from the Eastern Range so far this year have been by SpaceX. (10/18)

SpaceX Rideshare Service Squeezing Small Launchers (Source: Space News)
Small launch companies say it is difficult to compete with SpaceX's rideshare launches on price. In a panel at the Satellite Innovation conference Tuesday, executives suggested that SpaceX had artificially lowered rideshare prices to make dedicated small launchers uncompetitive, squeezing them out of the market. At an earlier talk at the conference, venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson predicted "over 100" small launch vehicle companies will go out of business in the next two years, having underestimated the competition with each other and with SpaceX. (10/18)

Israel Considering Starlink to Augment Comms Networks (Source: Tech Crunch)
Israel is in discussions with SpaceX to offer Starlink services in the country. Israel's communications minister said Tuesday that Starlink could provide redundancy if other communications networks are disrupted because of the ongoing conflict with Hamas. Starlink is not currently available in Israel. (10/18)

SpaceX Seeks to Head Off New Human Spaceflight Safety Rules (Source: Bloomberg)
SpaceX plans to advocate to the US Congress on Wednesday for a multiyear extension of a ban on imposing safety regulations on commercial human spaceflight. An executive at Elon Musk’s rocket company who is scheduled to testify at a Senate subcommittee hearing plans to argue that the Federal Aviation Administration already is struggling to keep pace with a rapidly shifting rocket launch industry. (10/17)

Space Development Agency to Evaluate SpiderOak Cybersecurity Software (Source: Space News)
The cybersecurity firm SpiderOak has signed an agreement with the U.S. Space Development Agency to research the use of the company’s software to protect ground systems that control military satellites.

SpiderOak, a software company focused on satellite cybersecurity, said Oct. 17 the agreement is a so-called Other Transaction Authority contract. It allows the Space Development Agency (SDA) to research the integration of the company’s OrbitSecure software suite into a military ground system currently in development called the Rapid Resilient Command and Control program. (10/17)

K2 Space is Building a Power-Rich Future for Space Exploration (Source: Tech Crunch)
Los Angeles-based K2 Space is accelerating its path to orbit with fresh venture funding, new defense contracts and a satellite architecture that will be capable of delivering staggering power levels in a single launch. The company is taking what co-founder and CEO Karan Kunjur described as a “pretty significant contrarian bet against the market.”

The premise of the bet goes something like this: The space industry is governed by a single calculus — cost per kilogram of mass. The dollar cost of mass affects how spacecraft are designed, how scientific missions are evaluated and even how entire businesses are planned. Although the cost per kilogram of mass has declined with the rise of new launch capabilities, spacecraft and mission designers still face egregious mass constraints. As a result, spacecraft have gotten smaller, lighter and more compact. But that doesn’t come without significant trade-offs in power, payload mass and volume.

K2 Space is moving in the opposite direction. The company emerged from stealth in March with ambitious plans to design and build massive satellite buses, at never-before-seen costs. Their hypothesis is that next-gen launch vehicles like SpaceX’s Starship will fundamentally change the cost per kilogram paradigm that has ruled with an iron fist for so long — but that to take advantage of this future, we must start planning for it now. (10/17)

Satnav Test on Remote Island Lab (Source: ESA)
Satellite navigation has become indispensable in our daily lives and is used in a myriad of applications, from guiding aircraft and driverless cars to monitoring water supplies and responding to emergencies. But satnav systems are potentially vulnerable to jamming and spoofing as their signal power on the ground is weak and most of their specifications are publicly available.

From 18 to 22 September, a team from ESA joined one of the world’s largest jamming testing campaigns, Norway’s Jammertest, together with dozens of participants from governmental agencies, industry and academia. An ESA telecommunications and navigation testbed vehicle usually based at ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, was driven to Norway for its first mission beyond Dutch borders. (10/17)

AI is Giving the Growing Space Industry a Boost (Source: Axios)
The AI boom could help fuel much-needed growth for the space industry. Investment in the space industry has faced headwinds this year in line with broader trends, but as space companies look for new lines of funding, government contracts and private investment, AI could serve as a boon. Companies that make use of and collect geospatial intelligence — photos and analysis of Earth — are enhancing their capabilities through advances in AI and machine learning.

Part of the barrier to entry for new customers in the space industry has centered around the fact that data is difficult to access and hard to understand. It also takes a while to build and test a model that could pick out a specific point of interest from a large dataset. (For example, finding new buildings as they pop up in a given area.) But generative AI could change that. Instead of needing specific longitude and latitude coordinates or a unique algorithm built to solve a problem, a potential user could simply present a question in natural language and get a quick answer from an AI trained on vast amounts of geospatial data. (10/17)

'Devil' Comet 3 Times Bigger Than Mount Everest Explodes, Now Heading Toward Earth (Source: New York Post)
The iceball cometh. As if things didn’t seem apocalyptic enough already, scientists reported that a “horned” comet three times bigger than Mount Everest exploded and is hurtling toward Earth. The blast originated on Oct. 5 from 12P/Pons-Brooks a cryovolcanic — or cold volcano — comet that measures a colossal 18.6 miles in diameter, or the size of a small city. For reference, Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, is 29,029 feet high — or about 5.5 miles. (10/17)

Scientific Systems to Develop Satellite Inspection Software for U.S. Space Force (Source: Space News)
Massachusetts-based Scientific Systems won a $1.5 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to develop software for in-space object detection and identification. The company will work on the project with Stanford University’s Space Rendezvous Laboratory over the next 15 months. “We will develop software that will be used in small cameras to allow satellites to safely identify, approach, and service other satellites or debris objects,” said Owen Brown. (10/17)

SpaceX Fires Back at AT&T and RWA in Starlink Cellular Service Battle (Source: Drive Tesla Canada)
SpaceX is preparing to test its Starlink cellular service with T-Mobile and launch its ‘direct-to-cell’ service next year, but the aerospace company is facing opposition from AT&T and the Rural Wireless Association (RWA). SpaceX is not taking the opposition lightly, issuing a fiery response that refers to the RWA as a “Dish-mouthpiece,” a not-so-subtle jab at Dish, a company which has previously attempted to thwart SpaceX’s progress. (10/16)

Capella Space Co-founder Steps Down as CEO (Source: Space News)
The co-founder of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging company Capella Space is stepping down as chief executive as the company seeks to grow its business, particularly with government customers. Capella Space announced Oct. 17 that Payam Banazadeh would step down as chief executive effective Oct. 23, remaining on the company’s board of directors. He will be replaced by Frank Backes, senior vice president at Kratos Defense and Security Solutions. (10/17)

India Space Goals: Space Station by 2035, Man on Moon by 2040 (Source: The Tribune)
Eyeing a major share of the global space market currently dominated by the US and China, India on Tuesday set ambitious goals for the national space agency with an aim to set up a space station by 2035 and send a man on moon by 2040. ISRO chairman S Somanath presented space mission goal objectives at a review meeting of the department of space taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. (10/17)

Space Travel has Littered Earth's Stratosphere with Tons of Hazardous Metals (Source: Earth.com)
The space age has unintentionally marked its presence on one of the most untouched realms of the Earth – the stratosphere – with tons of toxic metals. Recent findings suggest that the frequent voyages of spacecraft and satellites are significantly impacting this pristine layer of the atmosphere, with potential consequences for the climate and the ozone layer.

The study was led by Dan Murphy, an adjunct professor at Purdue University and a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The researchers utilized advanced tools attached to the nose cones of planes to collect air samples from more than 11 miles above the Earth’s surface. The team discovered a notable amount of metals, in the form of aerosols, lingering in the atmosphere. The primary suspects for this metallic presence are the increasing numbers of spacecraft and satellite launches and returns. (10/16)

Space Perspective Unveils First-Ever Space Spa Within Spaceship Neptune Capsule (Source: Space Perspective)
Space Perspective, the world's first carbon-neutral spaceflight experience company, today unveiled the custom design for its restroom – a first-ever Space Spa. Space Perspective has completely reimagined human spaceflight with an innovative spacecraft (Spaceship Neptune) that features a pressurized capsule propelled slowly to the edge of space by a giant SpaceBalloon.

Tucked into one side of the roomy capsule interior (the Space Lounge), the Space Spa will surpass facilities you would find in a first-class airplane cabin and serve as a solo oasis during spaceflight, which is a shared experience for eight Explorers accompanied by a Captain. (10/16)

Starlink Available on Qatar Airways (Source: Teslarati)
SpaceX’s Starlink internet service will be available on select aircraft and routes of Qatar Airways. “Qatar Airways is proud to announce its agreement with Starlink to provide seamless and complimentary Wi-Fi to its global passengers. (10/16)

In Visit to Florida Space Force Facility, Jill Biden Cites Need for Military Family Support (Source: UPI)
First lady Jill Biden called for more financial, educational and healthcare support for military families on Monday during appearance at the Patrick Space Force Base in Florida. Biden, accompanied by Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough, toured the facility in Brevard County. During a roundtable discussion at the Space Force facility, the first lady touted the goals of her Joining Forces initiative, a White House program designed to provide resources for families of U.S. Armed Services members, veterans, caregivers and survivors. (10/16)