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Chinese launch company Space Pioneer has raised $350 million, the latest in a series of major funding rounds for space startups in the country. The company announced a pre-D and D round funding worth nearly 2.5 billion yuan ($351 million) in a press statement last Thursday. The funds will mainly be used for mass production preparation of rockets and engines, as well as for the "development of new-generation engines and launch vehicles," according to the statement. The company has flown its Tianlong-2 rocket once, in 2023, and is close to an orbital test flight on the potentially reusable and much larger Tianlong-3. The statement on new-generation engines and launch vehicles suggests, however, that the company is planning a newer, more capable launcher. The funding is the latest in a series of massive rounds of investment into commercial space in China in recent weeks that included launch company Galactic Energy and satellite operator Geespace. [SpaceNews]

SpaceX successfully completed the final flight of the current version of its Starship vehicle Monday. The rocket lifted off from Starbase, Texas, at 7:23 p.m. Eastern on the Flight 11 mission, a suborbital test flight similar to the previous launch in late August. SpaceX said it completed all the major test milestones on the 66-minute suborbital flight. This is the last launch of version 2 of Starship as SpaceX works on a more capable version 3 with major upgrades to the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage. The company expects to begin orbital missions with the new version, including Starlink satellite deployments and Artemis lunar lander missions. [SpaceNews]

JPL employees are bracing for a new round of layoffs today. The lab announced Monday that it will lay off about 550 employees, or 11% of its current staff, as part of an ongoing restructuring effort. Employees will be notified today if they are being laid off. The layoffs, the center said, are not linked to the ongoing federal government shutdown. This is the fourth round of layoffs affecting JPL staff and contractors since the beginning of last year, which the lab has blamed on budget cuts and uncertain plans for major missions such as Mars Sample Return. [SpaceNews]

A surprising amount of communications on geostationary orbit satellites are unencrypted, researchers have revealed. In a paper being presented at a conference this week, researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Maryland described how they used basic equipment to listen on transmissions from GEO satellites, discovering that many of the signals are unencrypted. Those communications included backhaul cellular communications for T-Mobile and in-flight Wi-Fi services, as well as communications used for critical infrastructure providers. Some companies, having been informed of the lack of encryption, have since moved to encrypt those communications, but others have yet to act. [Wired]

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China launched an experimental satellite on Monday. A Long March 2D lifted off at 6 a.m. Eastern from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and placed the Shiyan-31 satellite into orbit. The launch came as a surprise to many observers, as Chinese officials had not issued airspace notices of a launch ahead of time. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said the satellite will be used to verify new optical imaging technology but provided no other details. [SpaceNews]

A Falcon 9 launched a set of Project Kuiper satellites Monday night after days of weather delays. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 9:58 p.m. Eastern, placing 24 Project Kuiper satellites into orbit for Amazon. The KF-03 mission was scheduled for last week but delayed by poor weather linked to a tropical storm offshore. This was the third and final launch of Kuiper satellites by Falcon 9, with Amazon planning to use the Ariane 6, Atlas 5, New Glenn and Vulcan Centaur for the remaining satellites in its broadband constellation. [Spaceflight Now]

Momentus and Solstar Space announced a three-year agreement Monday for various services offered by the two companies. Earlier this year, Momentus and Solstar announced plans to provide customers of the Vigoride space tug with on-demand connectivity through Solstar's Deke Space Communicator. The new agreement, with a value as much as $15 million, will combine Solstar's communications expertise with Momentus products and services related to launch, logistics, payload deployment and on-orbit services. [SpaceNews]

One of the first employees of SpaceX is going to space — with Blue Origin. Hans Koenigsmann, who joined SpaceX just after its 2002 founding and remained there until 2021, plans to go on a Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital flight as soon as next month. He will accompany Michaela "Michi" Benthaus, a friend who is set to be the first wheelchair user to go on a spaceflight. He said in an interview he was convinced that New Shepard was safe and got assurances that the experience of a brief suborbital flight was worth it. [Ars Technica]

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