By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: big funding rounds for Castelion and Muon Space, NASA abandons plans to reboost Swift, China's next lunar mission reaches the launch pad and more.
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Top Stories
Muon Space has raised $250 million to scale up production of spacecraft. The company said Thursday it closed a Series C round led by Eclipse Capital, which earlier this year co-led defense space startup True Anomaly's $650 million Series D. While Muon declined to comment on its valuation, a source said the funding valued it at $1.5 billion, adding to a surge of "space unicorns" crossing the $1 billion post-money threshold this year. The company has launched 11 satellites to date and has more than 50 in development for various customers. The company has focused on spacecraft weighing about 200 kilograms but plans to deploy its first 500-kilogram satellite next year for Hubble Network and unveiled in June plans for Condor-Ultra, an even larger satellite optimized for Starship. [SpaceNews]
Castelion, a defense-tech startup seeking to mass produce lower-cost hypersonic weapons, has raised more than $1 billion in new financing. The company announced Wednesday a Series C round that includes $800 million in equity, co-led by JPMorganChase's Strategic Investment Group, Andreessen Horowitz and funds managed by Carlyle, along with $250 million in a revolving credit facility. The funding will be used to expand production of Blackbeard, Castelion's hypersonic strike missile, at its New Mexico factory. It will also accelerate work on a longer-range precision strike weapon and defensive systems for air and missile defense. The new funding round values the four-year-old company at $13 billion. [SpaceNews]
NASA and Katalyst Space are calling off plans to reboost the orbit of the agency's Swift space telescope. Katalyst said Wednesday its Link spacecraft is suffering from "ongoing attitude control issues" it encountered after its launch last month, making it impossible for Link to grapple Swift and raise its orbit. The company said it will continue tests of Link, including potential rendezvous and proximity operations near Swift. NASA awarded a $30 million contract to the company last September for what the agency acknowledged was a high-risk mission to raise Swift's decaying orbit, but one with benefits for both Swift itself and the broader satellite servicing field if successful. Without the reboost, Swift is expected to reenter later this year. [SpaceNews]
Portal Space Systems is buying a Falcon 9 launch for its first Supernova spacecraft and will offer space for secondary payloads. Portal said Thursday it is partnering with Maverick Space Systems on the 2028 launch of Portal's Supernova, a large spacecraft with a solar thermal propulsion system for high maneuverability. The companies said they will offer excess capacity on the launch for rideshare payloads, with the option of using Supernova to move those payloads to the desired orbits. SpaceX's reported plans to phase out its rideshare launch program have left many customers looking for alternative means to get to orbit. [SpaceNews]
China is planning to launch a mission Sunday to look for water ice at the south pole of the moon. A Long March 5 rocket was rolled out at Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan island on Wednesday for a launch expected around 8 p.m. Eastern Sunday. The rocket is carrying Chang'e-7, a mission that includes an orbiter, lander, rover and hopper spacecraft. The lander, carrying the rover and hopper, will attempt a landing near Shackleton crater in the south polar region of the moon. The various elements of the mission carry instruments designed to search for water ice thought to exist in permanently shadowed regions of craters at the lunar south pole. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
Earth observation company Eartheye Space is partnering with strategic communications and consulting firm IN2. Under a memorandum of understanding announced Wednesday, IN2 will include Eartheye satellite data in the daily briefings and consulting projects its research staff prepares for government, defense and enterprise clients around the world. Eartheye Space, based in Singapore and Sydney, offers customers on-demand access to more than 30 commercial sensors on partner satellites, combined with AI analytics. Initially, the IN2 and Eartheye Space partnership will focus on infrastructure, disaster response and environmental monitoring. [SpaceNews]
A suborbital launch by South Korean startup Innospace failed Wednesday. The company's first Sebit sounding rocket lifted off from the Alcântara Space Center in Brazil at 3:30 p.m. Eastern. Video of the launch showed the vehicle starting to lose attitude control shortly after liftoff, and the vehicle then veered off course. Range safety officers activated the vehicle's flight termination system and debris from the vehicle splashed down in a designated hazard zone off the coast. Sebit uses a hybrid rocket motor similar to one on Innospace's Hanbit-Nano small orbital launch vehicle, which failed in its first flight from Alcântara last December. [Seoul Economic Daily]
An announcement about a potential SpaceX Starship launch site in Louisiana could come next week. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is holding an event next Tuesday in the city closest to the coastal site that for months had been rumored to be of interest to SpaceX as a Starship launch site. Invitations for the event say only it is for "announcing a defining moment for Louisiana's future" but sources familiar with the plans say it will involve a deal with SpaceX to develop a launch site there. [New Orleans Advocate]
Commercial space station venture Starlab Space has attracted another investor. Global Venture Management is making an investment of undisclosed size in Starlab Space, a joint venture led by Voyager Technologies to develop the Starlab commercial station. Global Venture Management manages capital on behalf of institutional and accredited investors seeking exposure to high-growth private companies. Starlab Space has attracted several such investors in the last year but has not stated how much capital they have provided. [Voyager Technologies]
NASA is working with organizations in seven states to promote training for space industry technical fields. NASA said Wednesday it is providing $10.5 million to schools and organizations in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Texas and Utah to help them create job-training programs through education and apprenticeships. The three-year effort, called NASA State Hubs, is intended to help meet the growing demand for skilled aerospace workers. The program is run by NASA's Office of STEM Engagement; NASA's fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, though, seeks to close that office. [NASA]
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Another Space Milestone
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"Humanity has put man on the moon. We've sent rovers to Mars. But nobody has sent a pork rind until now."
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– Mark Singleton, vice president of sales and marketing at Rudolph Foods, which announced Thursday it sent a package of pork rinds to space. However, the package was carried aloft by a balloon that reached a peak altitude of about 30 kilometers, far short of any widely used definition of space.
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