Plus: SAIC wins a $55M contract from the Space Development Agency
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| | | A SpaceNews daily newsletter | | 04/23/2025 | | | | | SAIC will serve as the program integrator for the Space Development Agency's satellite constellation. The five-year, $55 million contract announced Tuesday positions SAIC to lead system engineering and integration support for Tranche 3 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation designed to enhance the U.S. military's ability to detect and counter missile threats. SDA created the program integrator role to ensure better compatibility among satellites and cohesion across the network, both in space and on the ground. The move came after challenges in testing and operating satellites from different manufacturers in previous tranches. [SpaceNews]
Northwood Space has raised $30 million to develop a network of ground stations with phased-array antennas. Alpine Space Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz led the Series A investment round Northwood announced Tuesday, with participation from several other investors. The company is deploying a network of ground stations, with the goal of two sites per month, using phased-array antennas it is producing. The company demonstrated its technology last fall by linking a prototype antenna to a Planet earth observation satellite. [SpaceNews]
Iridium is taking steps to mitigate the effects of U.S. tariffs on its business. The company, which has imported most of its satellite communications equipment from Thailand, will expand a third-party European logistics partnership that will handle nearly all non-U.S. shipments of that hardware. Without that change, the company estimates it would have to pay between $3 million and $7 million in tariffs to import that equipment. Iridium said about a quarter of its customers are in the United States. [SpaceNews]
Astra wants to position its Rocket 4 launch vehicle as a system for rapid delivery of cargo. The company intends to leverage its contract with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to demonstrate point-to-point delivery of up to 600 kilograms of cargo using Rocket 4, a launch vehicle it is developing. Astra is one of several companies DIU selected last year for the Novel Responsive Space Delivery project, which aims to prototype commercial solutions for precise point-to-point delivery of supplies from orbit via specialized reentry vehicles. DIU confirmed that arrangement includes both a suborbital launch and an orbital launch, possibly from outside the United States. Astra, which neared bankruptcy last year before closing a deal to go private, said it is working toward a first test launch of Rocket 4 no earlier than the first quarter of 2026. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | Atmos Space Cargo said the first flight of its Phoenix reentry vehicle was largely a success, although with limited data about the reentry itself. Phoenix was one of the payloads on the SpaceX Bandwagon-3 rideshare mission that launched Monday, with the spacecraft reentering about two hours after launch. Atmos said Tuesday that the spacecraft collected data as planned while in space, including operating four payloads for customers. A change in the Bandwagon-3 trajectory made just five weeks before the launch, at the request of the primary payload, meant that reentry took place over the Atlantic Ocean rather than in the Indian Ocean as planned. This complicated the company's efforts to collect data from reentry. Atmos said that the spacecraft's inflatable heat shield did appear to deploy, but the company is still analyzing the data from the mission. [SpaceNews]
China has announced the crew for its next space station mission. The Shenzhou-20 mission will be commanded by Chen Dong, who previously flew on Shenzhou-11 and 14. Also on board will be Chen Zhongrui and Wang Jie, each on their first flights. Shenzhou-20 is scheduled to launch at 5:17 a.m. Eastern Thursday, going to the Tiangong space station for a six-month stay. [Xinhua]
SpaceX is set to begin Starlink services in Bangladesh next month. Muhammad Yunus, who is chief adviser, or interim head of government of Bangladesh, met with a SpaceX executive Wednesday to discuss a "technical rollout" of Starlink services in the country starting in May. Those plans are pending resolution of a few unspecified issues, a government spokesperson said. [United News of Bangladesh]
Among the items found in the basement of a Manhattan co-op building was a container of ashes of a spaceflight pioneer. The container, found when workers were cleaning out the basement of the Upper West Side building, held the ashes of Willy Ley, a German who wrote about spaceflight starting in the 1920s, before moving to New York in the 1930s. He died in 1969 just weeks before Apollo 11. Ley did not live in the building where his ashes were found and how they got there is not clear; he also has no living descendants. The president of the co-op building said she would like to launch his remains into space, if she can raise the estimated $12,500 one company charges for such flights. [New York Times]
| Need to Raise a Series Sea
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"It was so far away from the next harbor that a recovery with our means as a startup was not possible, right? I'm always joking that, if we had an aircraft carrier, we could have recovered here, but with our limited means this was not possible."
โ Sebastian Klaus, CEO of Atmos Space Cargo, discussing at a briefing Tuesday the challenge the company faced trying to recover its Phoenix reentry vehicle after a trajectory change resulted in a splashdown 2,000 kilometers off the coast of Brazil.
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