Plus: HawkEye 360 plans to go public
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Artemis 2 returned home, HawkEye 360 plans to go public, a Senate appropriator opposes proposed NASA budget cuts and more.
If someone forwarded you this edition, sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday. Have thoughts or feedback? You can hit reply to let me know.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Top Stories
NASA's Artemis 2 mission successfully ended Friday night with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The Orion spacecraft splashed down off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. Eastern. The four astronauts on board were in good condition and quickly taken out of the capsule to a recovery ship; they returned home to Houston on Saturday. The splashdown concluded a mission lasting more than nine days that served as a test flight of the Orion spacecraft around the moon, and was the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since 1972. NASA is now turning its attention to Artemis 3, a mission planned for 2027 where Orion will remain in Earth orbit to dock with lunar lander prototypes being developed by Blue Origin and SpaceX. [SpaceNews]
HawkEye 360 filed plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which operates a constellation of satellites that collect radio-frequency intelligence, said Friday it plans to go public on the NYSE using the ticker symbol HAWK, but did not disclose the number of shares or price of its initial public offering. The company sells that data primarily to government customers, including the U.S. military and intelligence agencies as well as allied nations, helping them track vessels and identify electronic systems. HawkEye 360 has raised more than $500 million to date in several rounds. [SpaceNews]
Chinese satellite maker Spacety has completed multiple rounds of equity financing worth $190 million. The company announced last week it raised the funding from a mix of state-linked industrial funds and domestic venture capital firms. The company said the financing will support its integrated "build-manage-use" satellite capabilities, focusing on scaling satellite manufacturing and accelerating data service commercialization. Spacety operates a constellation of radar imaging satellites and was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2023 for allegedly providing radar imagery to Russia's Wagner Group to support operations in Ukraine. Spacety also started the process for going public in January, signing a listing guidance agreement with a securities firm. [SpaceNews]
The chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA says he opposes proposed cuts to parts of the agency. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said at a space policy roundtable Sunday that he will seek a "robust and balanced" NASA spending for fiscal year 2027. His comments came a little more than a week after the White House proposed cutting NASA's overall spending by 23%, with bigger cuts in science, space technology and space operations. Moran said he wants NASA funding "that is pretty similar to what we did last year," stating that NASA's exploration plans are not the only important part of the budget. He did not give a timetable for developing a spending bill but noted that his subcommittee plans to have NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman testify about the budget at an upcoming hearing. [SpaceNews]
One company is taking a different approach to developing a broadband constellation. Logos Space Services recently secured FCC approval for a constellation of up to 4,178 broadband satellites, primarily using K-, Q- and V-band spectrum. Those are higher frequencies than current LEO broadband systems, which can improve capacity and interference resistance but also pose engineering challenges. The company argued that its approach offers greater security for its users. Logos is backed by serial entrepreneur Thomas Tull, whose dual-use technology investment firm U.S. Innovative Technologies led a $50 million Series A funding round for the venture last year. [SpaceNews]
Sophia Space will begin deploying edge compute nodes on Kepler Communications satellites late this year. The companies announced Monday a partnership where Sophia Space will demonstrate its Orbital Data Center software while relying on Kepler's optical data relay network. The collaboration is also designed to showcase multi-tenant, enterprise-grade compute operations in orbit. [SpaceNews]
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other News
A Cygnus spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station after a launch Saturday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7:41 a.m. Eastern and put the NG-24 Cygnus spacecraft from Northrop Grumman into orbit. The Cygnus is scheduled to arrive at the ISS later today and be berthed by the station's robotic arm. NG-24 is the second mission to use the larger Cygnus XL spacecraft, which can carry 5,000 kilograms of cargo. It is also the fourth Cygnus mission to launch on a Falcon 9 as Northrop works with Firefly Aerospace on the Antares 330 rocket. Northrop says at least one more Cygnus mission will launch on Falcon 9 before the company starts using the Antares 330. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX launched more Starlink satellites early Saturday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:04 a.m. Eastern and placed 25 Starlink satellites into orbit. This was the 32nd flight of this Falcon 9 booster, 23 of which carried Starlink satellites. [Edhat]
A Chinese rocket launched a technology demonstration satellite Saturday. A Jielong-3, or Smart Dragon-3, rocket launched from a ship off the coast of China's Guangdong province at 7:32 a.m. Eastern. It carried a payload named Weixing Hulianwang Jishu Shiyan Weixing that Chinese media said will promote satellite internet technology. [Xinhua]
A Blue Origin building was damaged in a test mishap last week. The building at its Florida facilities near the Kennedy Space Center suffered roof damage that the company said was caused by an unspecified anomaly. The building is used for testing the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket. No one was injured. The incident does not appear to affect plans for the next New Glenn launch, with the rocket moved to the pad over the weekend for a launch as soon as Thursday. [Orlando Sentinel]
Rocket Lab won a contract for three more launches for a Japanese company. Rocket Lab announced last week it won the contract from iQPS for three Electron launches starting in 2028 for iQPS's radar-imaging satellites. Rocket Lab has already performed seven launches for iQPS and had five more on its manifest before this latest award. [SpaceNews]
Ukraine is considering establishing a space force. A member of the Ukrainian parliament who chairs a defense subcommittee said in an interview that establishing a space force is needed to counter missile threats to the country, including the Russian Oreshnik missile that flies above 100 kilometers altitude. The space force would also develop its own communications and missile warning satellite systems to reduce dependence on companies and foreign governments. [RBC-Ukraine]
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM SPACENEWS |
 |
SmallSat Europe 2026 will be one of the most important gatherings of civil, defense and commercial smallsat professionals of the year. SpaceNews joins this year's event as the official producer of the Defense Stage, bringing together military leaders, startup founders and industry executives for conversations spanning launch access, resilient communications, AI, missile defense and the evolving orbital threat environment. Check out all the programming across the defense, business and technical tracks and register today. |
|
|
|
|
|
The Week Ahead
Monday:
Monday-Thursday:
Colorado Springs: The 41st Space Symposium includes sessions on civil, commercial and national security space. College Station, Texas: The Earth and Space 2026 conference by the American Society of Civil Engineers will discuss engineering in extreme environments on the Earth and beyond. Tuesday:
Jiuquan, China: Projected launch of a Kinetica-1 rocket carrying several Jilin-1 Gaofen imaging satellites at 12:05 a.m. Eastern. Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 2:13 a.m. Eastern. Washington: The Senate Commerce Committee holds a rescheduled markup of several bills, including some space-related legislation, at 10 a.m. Eastern. Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites at 10 p.m. Eastern. Wednesday:
Wednesday-April 22:
Thursday:
Cape Canaveral, Fla.: No-earlier-than launch of the third New Glenn rocket by Blue Origin, carrying an AST Space Mobile satellite, at 6:45 a.m. Eastern.
Friday:
Saturday:
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment