By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Astranis secures an Ex-Im loan as Varda raises a new round, a likely nominee for the next commander of U.S. Space Command, Astro Digital plans to go public through a SPAC and more.
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FROM SPACENEWS |
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Where do space investors see the biggest opportunities? SpaceNews has mapped the ranks of private space firms valued at $1 billion or more, capturing 37 companies working in launch and satellite broadband, Earth observation, space stations, orbital data centers and other promising markets. Drawing on public disclosures, original reporting and other sources, each profile tracks when and how a company achieved unicorn status and its latest known valuation, alongside funding-round breakdowns and total capital raised from BryceTech’s Startup Space database. Download the report. |
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Top Stories
Satellite manufacturer Astranis has secured a $468 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The financing, announced Wednesday, was approved by Ex-Im under its Make More in America initiative, a program that provides financing for U.S. manufacturing projects tied to exports. The Astranis agreement is a direct loan, meaning the federal agency is providing the financing rather than guaranteeing debt supplied by a commercial lender. The financing marks another significant injection of capital for the San Francisco-based company, which raised $450 million in private equity and debt in May as it expands manufacturing of small GEO satellites for commercial and government customers. [SpaceNews]
Space Force Lt. Gen. David Miller Jr. is expected to be nominated to become the next commander of U.S. Space Command. President Donald Trump has officially nominated Miller for promotion to general, according to a congressional nomination notice posted Tuesday. The notice establishes that Miller has been nominated for the four-star rank required for the Space Command position but does not identify his next assignment. Miller serves as the Space Force's deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs and requirements. [SpaceNews]
Varda Space Industries has raised $251 million. Varda announced a Series D round Wednesday led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital that values the company at $1.6 billion. The company operates reentry spacecraft for microgravity pharmaceutical research and hypersonics testing. The company has flown six missions to date and has three more launching in the next month. The funding will allow the company to scale up its flight rate and advance pharmaceutical work. [SpaceNews]
Space Network has secured $150 million in pre-orders for its satellite broadband system. The company recently announced a $100 million deal with Vietnamese technology startup DETI Technology and a $50 million pre-order from HQ Company, a renewable energy infrastructure developer in the Philippines. In addition to leading wholesale sales in their respective countries, HQ and DETI plan to secure the local Ka-band spectrum rights that Space Network would use to provide broadband there from a global constellation of 230 satellites by 2029. Space Network was set up as the neutral infrastructure layer for Spacecoin, a project using blockchain to facilitate payments between independently owned satellites and other parts of the network. The company operates four cubesats in LEO to demonstrate technology for the network, ordered from Bulgaria's EnduroSat and Near Space Launch of Indiana. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Space Force is pushing back a planned procurement of commercial communications services from maneuverable satellites in GEO. The Space Systems Command's Commercial Satellite Communications Office, or CSCO, now expects to seek proposals in October for the Maneuverable Geosynchronous Orbit satellite-services program, known as MGEO, and make an award in April 2027. This is the latest delay for a program that once planned to make awards in July 2025. MGEO is intended to tap into the smaller geostationary satellite marketplace, using spacecraft with greater ability to reposition themselves in GEO. The Space Force also is tapping the small GEO market under the Protected Tactical Satcom-Global program, or PTS-G, program, with awards in June to Viasat and Intelsat. [SpaceNews]
ESA has selected industry teams led by Airbus Defence and Space and OHB for studies of a future European space station. ESA announced the companies leading the two consortia on Tuesday and said six additional industrial and institutional partners would also participate, but did not identify them. ESA did not disclose the value of the contracts but the call for proposals capped awards at 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) each. The studies will examine the feasibility of a European-led station that could support two to four astronauts for short-duration missions, rather than be permanently crewed. It is one of three scenarios ESA is studying for its future in LEO after the International Space Station, with the other two involving use of commercial stations with the potential for some European infrastructure installed on them. [SpaceNews]
Avio's U.S. subsidiary broke ground on a factory that will produce solid rocket motors for missiles. Avio USA is building a 900,000-square-foot facility in Hurt, Virginia, that is expected to be capable of producing thousands of solid rocket motors annually for U.S. tactical missile program. The company wants the Virginia operation to function as a merchant supplier, selling motors to multiple defense contractors rather than dedicating the factory to a single missile program. The facility is scheduled for completion in late 2028 with the first motors produced there in early 2029. [SpaceNews]
Parsons won an $85 million contract to oversee construction of U.S. Space Command's new headquarters building. The company said Tuesday it was selected to serve as the government's "owner's advisor" for the new Command and Control Facility at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. The 75-month agreement puts Parsons in a central management role as the government designs and builds what is expected to be a roughly $2 billion headquarters complex. The Space Command headquarters is expected to encompass about 950,000 square feet and support as many as 1,800 personnel. The project is also an early test of a new Pentagon approach intended to speed up military construction, which can take a decade or longer for large and complicated facilities. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
Chinese commercial launch firm CAS Space is targeting a first flight of the Lihong-2 suborbital rocket in early 2027. The launch would carry pharmaceutical payloads under an agreement with Guangzhou Laboratory. CAS Space had planned a late 2026 launch of the rocket earlier this year. Lihong-2 is designed to go above an altitude of 100 kilometers, providing a microgravity environment for more than 180 seconds and carry up to 3,000 kilograms of payload. The rocket's booster would make a powered vertical landing while a capsule carrying the payload lands under parachutes. [SpaceNews]
Several Chinese startups are working on rocket engines with electric pumps. At least four companies in China are working on engines with electric pumps, which eliminate complex turbomachinery. The engines are in various stages of development and testing, each producing several tons of thrust. Rocket Lab uses an electric-pump architecture for the Rutherford engine that powers its Electron rocket, although the company has moved to more traditional designs for the larger Archimedes engine powering Neutron. The apparent trend comes following clear signals from China's central government that commercial space is of strategic importance and a potential economic driver, even as the country's launch sector becomes crowded. [SpaceNews]
Astro Digital plans to go public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. The company said Monday it agreed to merge with Proem Acquisition Corp I in a transaction carrying a proposed enterprise value of about $587 million. The merger could provide up to $180 million in gross proceeds from Proem’s trust account and private financing led by Proem Asset Management and Leon Capital Group. The companies expect to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to shareholder approval and other conditions. Denver-based Astro Digital has delivered nearly 40 satellites to customers including NASA, the Defense Department, Boeing and Sony. The company expects the funding would help Astro Digital add production capacity and expand its sales operation. [SpaceNews]
Sophia Space and Redwire Corp. announced an agreement Wednesday to work together on space-based computing infrastructure. Under an MOU, the companies will explore how Sophia's modular orbital-compute architecture could benefit from Redwire technology in areas including solar-power generation, large deployable structures and thermal management. That work could include, in the long term, collaboration on orbital data centers. [SpaceNews]
Lithuania's Blackswan Space has raised around $2.9 million to develop a rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) payload. The company has created RPO Kit, a spacecraft subsystem comprising sensors and the software needed to guide maneuvers near another object in orbit, follows five years of vision-based navigation technology development. Orbit Fab plans to use the system for an in-space refueling demo mission in 2028. Blackswan plans to test a scaled-down version in space for the first time in late 2027, using an internally funded chaser and target spacecraft in low Earth orbit. [SpaceNews]
Asteroid mining company AstroForge plans to test a fully autonomous spacecraft on a mission next year. The company's Autonomy-1 spacecraft will launch on the first flight of Stoke Space's Nova Pathfinder rocket early next year. Autonomy-1 will be equipped with Solo, an artificial intelligence model AstroForge has developed that will be able to handle all operations on the spacecraft, including detecting and resolving any anomalies, without any intervention from the ground. AstroForge said it pursued Solo after challenges communicating with its first spacecraft, Odin, launched last year. Having the spacecraft be fully autonomous reduces operations cost and complexity. Solo will also run in a "shadow" mode on DeepSpace-2, an asteroid prospecting mission launching next year, but will not handle spacecraft operations. [SpaceNews]
A study has concluded a second New Zealand spaceport is viable. The study, prepared by French spaceport developer SpacedreamS, examined a site south of Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand that is home to the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre. The site currently has a runway for aircraft flight testing, but the study found it could also support launches. Tāwhaki and SpacedreamS said they are discussing spaceport development with government officials and investors, but did not disclose a cost for developing a launch site there or schedule, or who might be interested in using it. [Radio New Zealand]
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Not As Crazy Now
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"I thought it was the craziest idea in the world. I wrote it off."
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— Harry Atwater, a Caltech professor who is leading a project on space-based solar power, speaking at a symposium on the topic Wednesday about his reaction when he first encountered the concept a decade ago.
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