 | Top Stories
Isar Aerospace has raised more than 65 million euros ($70 million) in an extension of an earlier Series C round. The company announced Thursday that it raised the funding from a mix of existing and new investors, the latter including the new NATO Innovation Fund. The extension brings the size of the Series C round to more than 220 million euros and the overall funding raised by Isar to more than 400 million euros. The company says the new funding will go toward efforts to scale up production of its Spectrum small launch vehicle. The rocket has yet to make its first flight and the company has not provided recent updates on when the vehicle will be ready to launch. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Space Force has embarked on yet another attempt to modernize ground systems used to command and control military satellites. The latest effort, called Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2), will rely more on commercial providers and cloud computing for systems needed to modernize the military's satellite ground infrastructure. The service believes that previous attempts to revamp ground systems got bogged down in part because they relied too heavily on traditional prime contractors unaccustomed to delivering the type of agile, software-driven capabilities required. R2C2 started a year and a half ago but only recently selected 20 companies for a contract vehicle that will allow them to bid on specific aspects of the system. [SpaceNews]
ESA has taken a first step towards modifying long-standing policies that guarantee member states contracts based on the size of their financial contributions. Agency officials said Wednesday that the ESA Council approved a resolution to test changes to "georeturn" policies that, for some pilot projects, will give ESA some flexibility in how it awards contracts. Georeturn states that member states will get contracts for ESA projects based on the size of their contributions, an approach intended to encourage countries to fund those programs but which some companies argue results in inefficiencies. ESA did not disclose details about the specific proposed georeturn changes but called them a "first step" toward broader reforms. [SpaceNews]
ExoTerra Resources announced it raised $8 million to expand production of microsatellite propulsion systems. The Lago Innovation Fund, part of Lago Asset Management, supplied the funding. The new capital will allow ExoTerra to expand production of its Halo Hall-effect electric thrusters for smallsats. Those thrusters were used in space for the first time last year on DARPA Blackjack Aces satellites manufactured by RTX subsidiary Blue Canyon Technologies. [SpaceNews]
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| Other News
Rocket Lab is preparing for a milestone launch later today. An Electron rocket is scheduled to lift off from the company's New Zealand launch site at 2:13 p.m. Eastern, placing into orbit five satellites for French company Kinéis, which is developing an Internet of Things constellation. The launch will be the 50th for Electron since its debut a little more than seven years ago, a pace Rocket Lab says is the fastest for any commercially developed rocket. [Space.com]
Weather postponed a Falcon 9 launch Wednesday evening. The Falcon 9 was scheduled to launch the Astra 1P satellite for SES, but SpaceX called off the launch a few hours before the scheduled liftoff time, citing poor weather. The launch is scheduled for today at 5:35 p.m. Eastern, and the opening of a window about three hours long. [Spaceflight Now]
Titan's methane seas may have waves like those on Earth. Analysis of images of the coastlines of lakes and seas on Saturn's largest moon show they are similar in form to coastlines seen on Earth where waves have eroded shorelines. Scientists had speculated that winds in Titan's dense atmosphere might create waves, but any waves had not been directly observed by spacecraft. [New Scientist]
Nigeria's space agency has reached a deal with an American organization to fly the first Nigerian to space on a Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital flight. The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) announced Wednesday it signed an agreement with the Space Exploration and Research Agency (SERA), an American organization, who will provide NASRDA a seat on a New Shepard flight. A competition will select the Nigerian to fly on that mission, although no date for the launch was announced. SERA, formerly the Crypto Space Agency, arranged for a flight of a Brazilian on a New Shepard mission in 2022. [BusinessDay Nigeria]
| |  | Co-Stars
"It was an amazing event where heliophysics really shined as the star of the day. Obviously, the sun was the star of the day."
– Joe Westlake, director of NASA's heliophysics division, discussing NASA's outreach efforts for April's total solar eclipse during a meeting Tuesday of the Heliophysics Advisory Committee.
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