By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Cowboy Space lassos a big funding round, Viasat wins a Marine Corps contract, MDA Space presses ahead with work on a robotic arm for the Gateway and more.
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ST Engineering MRAS is a leading manufacturer of complex aerostructures including nacelle systems and critical airframe components. Operating from a 2 million sq ft site near Baltimore, Maryland, the company houses design, engineering, manufacturing, and MRO operations under one roof. MRAS has been involved in the space industry since the 1960s, when it contributed components for the Gemini spacecraft as part of Martin Marietta Corporation. Today, MRAS applies its composite materials expertise to produce fuselage sections, external panels, heat shields, and technologies for reusable rocket structures and in-space satellite panels, supporting various space programs and projects. |
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Top Stories
Cowboy Space, a startup formerly known as Aetherflux, has raised $275 million for orbital data centers. The company announced Monday it raised the Series B round, led by early-stage investor Index Ventures, valuing the company at $2 billion. The deal makes two-year-old Cowboy one of the space industry’s fastest “unicorns” — privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more — just a little more than a month after two-year-old Starcloud crossed the threshold with a $170 million Series A to develop its own orbital data centers. The company was founded as Aetherflux to pursue space-based solar power, but recently pivoted to orbital data centers. Cowboy Space's long-term plans include the development of a rocket larger than a Falcon 9 whose upper stage would serve as an orbital data center once in low Earth orbit. [SpaceNews]
A mission to reboost a NASA space telescope is a step closer to launch. NASA announced Friday that Link, a spacecraft developed by Katalyst Space to raise the orbit of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, passed environmental testing recently at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Link is back at a Katalyst facility for final preparations and will be integrated with its launch vehicle, a Pegasus XL, in early June for launch later that month. Link is designed to attach to Swift and raise its orbit before Swift reenters late this year. [SpaceNews]
Viasat won a $307 million contract to provide communications services for the U.S Marine Corps. The five-year contract announced Friday is for the Marine Corps Enterprise Commercial Satellite Services, or MECS2. Under the MECS2 program, the Marine Corps is seeking to integrate multi-orbit and multi-band services that leverage newer commercial satellite architectures. The contract was awarded by Space Systems Command's Commercial Space Office, which procures commercial satellite communications services on behalf of U.S. military branches. [SpaceNews]
MDA Space says it is continuing work on a robotic arm for the lunar Gateway even as NASA plans to cancel that program. In an earnings call Thursday, company executives said they were working "full steam ahead" on Canadarm3 while in discussions with the Canadian Space Agency on how the robotic arm could be repurposed for operations on the lunar surface. Canadarm3 was Canada's contribution for the Gateway, and the agency awarded a contract worth 1 billion Canadian dollars ($730 million) in 2024 to MDA Space to design and develop the arm. NASA announced in March that it was suspending work on the Gateway to focus resources on a lunar base. MDA officials did not discuss details of those discussions with the space agency but said they expected a decision on how to proceed soon. [SpaceNews]
A former NASA chief of staff is back at the agency in a new role. NASA announced Friday it had appointed Brian Hughes as senior director of launch operations, overseeing launch operations at the Kennedy Space Center and Wallops Flight Facility. Hughes served as NASA chief of staff from May to December last year and, after leaving NASA, was a partner at political consulting firm Mercury Public Affairs. NASA said he will help coordinate "unprecedented demand for launch," although most launch activity uses facilities not run by NASA. Hughes' lack of space industry experience has raised concerns and criticism, including from the top Democrat on the House Science Committee. [SpaceNews]
Paraguay is the latest country to sign the Artemis Accords. The South American country signed the Artemis Accords last week in a ceremony in the capital city of Asunción. The country is the 67th to sign the Accords and the sixth in the last three weeks. The Accords outline best practices for space exploration, and NASA increasingly sees the document as the Accords as a way of coordinating international cooperation in the Artemis lunar exploration campaign. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
China launched a cargo spacecraft to its Tiangong space station Sunday night. A Long March 7 rocket lifted off at 8:14 p.m. Eastern from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, placing the Tianzhou-10 spacecraft into orbit. Tianzhou-10 docked with the aft port of the space station's Tianhe core module five hours later. The spacecraft carried a new extravehicular spacesuit, a treadmill, around 700 kilograms of propellant, consumables for the future Shenzhou-23 and Shenzhou-24 crews, and more than 220 spare parts and maintenance components for the station. [SpaceNews]
ESA and JAXA finalized an agreement to cooperate on an asteroid mission. The heads of the agencies signed a cooperation agreement last week for the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety, or Ramses, scheduled to launch in 2028. JAXA will provide the solar panels and an instrument for Ramses, as well as launch it on an H3 rocket. Ramses will rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, two months before the asteroid makes a very close flyby of Earth, studying the asteroid before and after it swings by Earth. [SpaceNews]
The city of Cape Canaveral, Florida, is partnering with a college to study noise from launches. Rollins College will place sensors on buildings throughout the city, just south of the Cape Canaveral spaceport, to measure noise from launches. Local residents have raised concerns about the effects of noise and vibrations from launches on their homes, particularly given future launches of SpaceX's Starship from the Cape starting as soon as late this year. [Florida Today]
Rocket engine noise is also a concern for residents of a central Texas city. Dozens of residents of McGregor, Texas, filed suit against SpaceX recently, claiming damage from rocket engine testing at a SpaceX facility near the city. The plaintiffs claim they have suffered a "daily barrage of terrestrial bombardment" from the engine tests, which have taken place there for many years. The suit was filed around the same time as residents near Starbase, Texas, sued SpaceX for damage from Starship launches there. [KWTX-TV Waco, Texas]
An Indian startup says consecutive PSLV launch failures forced it to go overseas to launch a spacecraft. TakeMe2Space said it now plans to launch its MOI-1a satellite on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission in October rather than a PSLV rocket. MOI-1a is a replacement for MOI-1, which was one of several payloads lost on a PSLV launch failure in January, the second consecutive failure of that rocket. The satellite is intended to test orbital data center technologies. The Indian space agency ISRO has not provided any recent updates on the status of the failure investigation and plans to return the PSLV to flight. [ThePrint]
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The Week Ahead
Monday:
Tuesday:
Tuesday-Thursday:
Wednesday:
Wednesday-Thursday:
Thursday:
Friday:
Jiuquan, China: Anticipated launch of a Kinetica 1 rocket with an undisclosed payload at 12:33 a.m. Eastern. Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying a set of Starlink satellites at 10 a.m. Eastern. El Segundo, Calif.: The Los Angeles Times Media Group and Arizona State University host the Aerospace & Defense Summit. Starbase, Texas: No-earlier-than launch of SpaceX's Starship/Super Heavy on its 12th suborbital teat flight at 6:30 p.m. Eastern. Sunday:
Cape Canaveral, Fla.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 carrying Globalstar satellites at 8:50 a.m. Eastern. Wenchang, China: Anticipated launch of a Long March 8 carrying a set of Qianfan satellites at 10:40 a.m. Eastern.
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