November 16, 2018

ANA and Marubeni Join to Build Spaceport in Japan (Source: Nikkei)
All Nippon Airways operator ANA Holdings and trading house Marubeni will set up a spaceport in Japan as early as 2021, Nikkei has learned. The launch site, equivalent to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft, will be for private space travel, and feature 3-km runways for craft that take off horizontally like airplanes.

There are already around 10 spaceports in the U.S. for commercial use, some built for the purpose and others converted from airports. The Japanese corporate alliance aims to secure a foothold in the international space-business race by building Asia's first space travel hub. The two companies, together with four other partners -- including Airbus Japan, satellite broadcaster Sky Perfect JSAT and real estate company Mitsui Fudosan -- have established a company named Spaceport Japan to advance the project. The Tokyo-based team will begin work on Friday. (11/16)

SpaceX Launches Qatari Satellite, Lands Booster Off Florida Coast (Source: Space News)
SpaceX launched a Qatari communications satellite Thursday, tying a record for most launches by the company in a year. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:46 p.m. Eastern and deployed the Es'hail-2 satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit 32 minutes later. The satellite, built by Mitsubishi for Qatari operator Es'hailSat, carries Ku-band capacity for television broadcasting and Ka-band capacity for connectivity to businesses and government users. The rocket's first stage previously launched the Telstar 19 satellite in July.

The launch was the 18th this year for SpaceX, tying a record set last year, with four more launches scheduled through the end of the year. SpaceX performed a static-fire test last night for its next launch, of Spaceflight's SSO-A mission, scheduled for Monday at Vandenberg Air Force Base. (11/16)

Can Government Keep Up with Commercial Earth Observation? (Source: Space News)
There is a growing gap in the pace of innovation between commercial and government Earth observation programs. At an ESA conference this week, Peter Platzer, CEO of Spire, announced his company's "space-as-a-service" program, where it will provide a 20-satellite constellation to customers within 12 months, at an introductory price of 10 million euros. Platzer further criticized the slow pace at which publicly funded projects move, which leads to their failure to harness cutting-edge innovation. Will Marshall, CEO of Planet, said there is a need for public institutions to incorporate more flexibility into their budgets to enable their EO-driven services to take advantage of the latest innovations and disruptions. (11/16)

Solstar Space Seeks Partners for Space Wi-Fi (Source: Space News)
A company that has tested in-space use of Wi-Fi is looking for a strategic investor. Solstar Space says it's seeking "a space company that understands our market and wants to help us develop it." The New Mexico company tested a Wi-Fi communications system on two suborbital spaceflights of Blue Origin's New Shepard vehicle earlier this year, and says that technology could offer connectivity for future suborbital passengers or experiments, as well as for orbital spacecraft. (11/16)

Midland TX Spaceport Finds Satellite Startup to Take XCOR Hangar in Rent Abatement Deal (Source: Space News)
A satellite startup plans to take over a hangar at a Texas airport previously used by XCOR Aerospace. Avellan Space Technology & Science (AST) said Thursday it will use the hangar at the Midland International Air and Space Port to produce its Micron line of very small satellites. The company says it will invest $30 million in the manufacturing facility, with plans to produce as many as 100,000 of the Micron satellites, each weighing 200 grams. AST has not disclosed any customers for those satellites. Midland is offering five years of rent abatement to AST for use of the hangar, with an additional five years if the company meets job creation and payroll goals. (11/16)

Luxembourg Government Assumes Losses in Planetary Resources (Source: Lux Times)
Luxembourg has confirmed the loss of its €12 million investment in US space firm Planetary Resources. Following a series of parliamentary questions, Luxembourg's economy minister Etienne Schneider explained that in the absence of new funding, the financial situation of US space firm Planetary Resources had continued to deteriorate. In October, the Luxembourg government decided to sell its 10% shares in the company.

It took a stake in 2016. At that time, the Economy Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding and agreed to invest €25 million. "This decision to sell results, among other things, from an analysis of the particular American legal context and prudent management which intends to limit the potential exposures of SAAM Luxembourg, or even of SNCI as sole shareholder of SAAM Luxembourg," Schneider explained. (11/15)

Fake ‘Unicorns’ Are Running Roughshod Over the Venture Capital Industry (Source: Intelligencer)
You might think that a study demonstrating that venture capital-funded “unicorns” are overvalued, and by a stunning 48 percent on average, would shake up the industry. Yet “Squaring Venture Capital Valuations With Reality,” a paper announcing just that finding received only a perfunctory round of coverage from some important investment and tech publications when it was published.

The median venture capital fund loses money. Only the top 5 percent of funds earn enough to justify the risks of investing in venture capital. The nature of venture capital is that the performance of those few successful funds in turn rests on the spectacular results of a small fraction of the investments in a particular fund.

How does this pervasive overvaluation come about in the first place? Once you understand it, it’s breathtakingly simple. Venture capital-backed companies are money pits. Even if they manage to become profitable in accounting terms, they almost always need more funding to support their growth, typically every 12 to 24 months. The tech stars profiled in the paper, 135 U.S. “unicorns” (i.e., companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more) had undergone an average of eight rounds of fundraising. Click here. (11/14)

Spaceflight Industries Goes Through Financial Restructuring as Key Launch Nears (Source: GeekWire)
Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries laid out the status of a debt restructuring plan this week in advance of its most ambitious satellite launch operation to date. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday describe an offering of $29.9 million in debt instruments and options for other securities, with five investors participating to date. The filing said $22 million of the offering has been sold, with $7.9 million remaining.

Spaceflight Industries spokeswoman Jodi Sorensen told GeekWire in an email that the filing was triggered when the company finished up a restructuring deal. “Part of that funding ($15M) went through restructuring, making it more available to us, while the current investors did invest another $7M,” she explained. “So some is from restructuring, some is net new investment.” (11/15)

Bridenstine Worried About Budget Pressures on NASA (Source: Space News)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Nov. 15 that the reelection defeat of a key appropriator, and the potential for budget cuts next year, is a cause for concern for him as he tries to balance the agency’s priorities. Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), chairman of the commerce, justice and science (CJS) subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, was known for his efforts to increase funding for NASA. Bridenstine said Culberson’s absence will be felt.

Bridenstine also noted that NASA, like other federal agencies, has been asked by the White House to develop proposals for a five percent cut in its fiscal year 2020 budget, currently being crafted for released in February. That would require NASA to find approximately $1 billion in cost savings across its programs. Such a cut, he suggested, would imperil its exploration plans. “If that materializes, no, we’re not going to have what we need to go to the moon,” he said. “We’re certainly not going to have what we need to put boots on the moon.”

Bridenstine said he wouldn’t try to compensate for any cuts by taking money from other agency programs to keep NASA’s exploration efforts funded. “If we start robbing one part of NASA to feed another part of NASA, we will lose political support in a heartbeat,” he said. (11/15)

Space Tango Unveils ST-42 for Scalable Manufacturing in Space for Earth-Based Applications (Source: Space Tango)
Space Tango, a leader in the commercialization of space through R&D, bioengineering and manufacturing in microgravity, announced ST-42, a fully autonomous robotic orbital platform designed specifically for scalable manufacturing in space. Launching in the mid 2020’s, ST-42 aims to harness the unique environment of microgravity to produce high value products across industries; from patient therapeutics to advanced technology products that have the potential to revolutionize industries here on Earth. (11/15)

A Group of Young Women in Kyrgyzstan is Crowdfunding the Country’s First Satellite Launch (Source: Quartz)
Of the world’s 195 countries, 72 have official space agencies, including Nigeria, Bangladesh, Peru, and Bolivia. Kyrgyzstan does not. So a group of young women decided to start their own. Kyrgyzstan is not an easy place to be female; it was described last year by Reuters as “a nation rife with domestic violence, child marriage and bride kidnappings.”

The dozen or so members of the Kyrgyz Space Program, who range in age from 17 to 25, came together for a free robotics course started by journalist and TED fellow Bektour Iskender last March and meet twice a week at the offices of Kloop, the independent journalism school Iskender runs in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital. They are crowdfunding their work towards building and launching a cube satellite, a miniature design known as a CubeSat that can cost as little as $150,000 to produce.

The money that comes in will pay for the project in phases; the various funding tiers are named for prominent women in space, from Russian cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova ($2/month) to American Peggy Whitson, who has spent more time in space than any other female astronaut in history ($1,024/month). The team hopes to have built it and ready for launch sometime next year. (11/2)

FCC Approves SpaceX, Telesat, LeoSat and Kepler Internet Constellations (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted Nov. 15 to approve four proposed satellite constellations, authorizing nearly 8,000 small telecom satellites to serve U.S. entities from low Earth orbit. The new regulatory approvals set the stage for two companies, SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, and Telesat of Ottawa, Canada, to expand constellations already approved last year with more satellites in the rarely used V-band spectrum.

Canadian startup Kepler Communications and LeoSat, a company licensed from the Netherlands, also received approvals, Kepler for 140 Ku-band satellites and LeoSat for 78 Ka-band satellites. Of the four, SpaceX is by far the largest with 7,518 satellites constituting what it calls a “very low Earth orbit,” or VLEO constellation that would operate slightly below 350-kilometers. At that altitude, SpaceX says atmospheric drag would pull spent satellites down in one month, assuaging concerns about the magnitude of debris that that many satellites could create in higher orbits.

While the constellations approved are only proposed, three of the four companies whose plans advanced Nov. 15 already have demonstration satellites in orbit. SpaceX launched two prototype satellites in February, one month before the company gained FCC approval for its initial constellation of 4,425 satellites in Ku- and Ka-band frequencies. The company is building its satellites in-house. (11/15)

Vatican Astronomer Says Space the New Terrestrial Frontier (Source: Crux)
According to Brother Guy Consolmagno, the Jesuit research astronomer who runs the Vatican’s observatory, global interest in outer space is increasing at astronomical proportions, from mineral harvesting off asteroids, to militarizing the zone and developing artificial intelligence for research. With the space race taking off internationally, there is a need for clearer parameters to be set for conduct, making space “the next frontier of law,” Consolmagno said.

Noting how 2017 marked the 50th anniversary of the United Nations 1967 “Outer Space Treaty” on governing the activities of states in outer space, including the moon and other “celestial bodies,” Consolmagno said the treaty was followed by a major discussion on the “peaceful uses of space.” Consolmagno traveled to Vienna in June to represent the Vatican at a meeting on the space issue, reaffirming the peaceful uses of space and the right each nation has regarding the space frontier, because “any war that is going to occur in space is going to touch all of us.” (11/15)

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