Welcome back to Max Q! Happy holidays everyone. We are nearing the end of the year, and what a year it has been. I think it is safe to say that this has been a landmark year for the space industry. I am looking forward to seeing what the next year has in store. Alright, now onto the news!
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The person is heading to Cape Canaveral.
After its first successful launch, space startup Astra is heading to the Space Coast. The company said it would carry CubeSats for NASA's first mission outside of Pacific Spaceport Complex Alaska. The launch is part of a contract that was won by Astra last year.
It is a big win for the company. One of the key values of the company is that its on-site launch operations are lightweight and can be effectively deployed from a number of sites. The Florida location will allow the company to serve even more customers.
John Kraus and Astra were credited with the image.
Ursa Major wants to disrupt the rocket launch sector.
With a fresh round of funding, Ursa Major is scaling up its ambitions to disrupt the vertically integrated launch sector. The company raised $85 million in a Series C led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock.
The startup has already put its first product into production, a 5,000-pound thrust liquid oxygen and kerosene engine called Hadley, and it is at work on the Ripley, the next-gen engine that is 10 times more powerful than Hadley.
Ursa Major is like a company like Intel, which is constantly inventing more powerful processors and outsourcing that expertise to brands like Dell and Lenovo. We like the idea that we are a technology development company, and that the companies that are flying rockets today should not be using the same engine that they used 10 years ago. That is the paradigm we see in vertical integration.
There are other news from the world.
The $90 million agreement was signed by Astranis with the Latin American telecom company. The first launch will be in the year 2023.
Commercial space tourism will cause the Federal Aviation Administration to end its Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program at the beginning of 2022. Individuals who travel 50 miles above Earth will be recognized on the website.
A new round of funding led by investment company BlackRock has raised $140 million. The space infrastructure startup has already launched two satellites, and plans to use the funds to scale its business, CNBC reports.
Los Alamos National Labs awarded a contract to build a small craft that is about the size of a microwave. It will host instruments to measure radiation.
Planet Labs is a publicly traded company. The stock began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol sybol $PL. Planet received around $590 million in proceeds from the transaction.
Here we go! We will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange as a Public Benefit Corporation, furthering our mission to use space to help life on Earth.
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December 8, 2021.
After delivering two satellites to BlackSky, Rocket Lab has now deployed more than 100 satellites. Synspective and Rocket Lab have a three-launch deal.
Tomorrow.ai is the space industry's most recent company to announce a merger with a blank-check firm, in a deal that the startup says could inject it with up to $420 million in capital. Tomorrow's aim is to operate a network of weather satellites and an intelligence platform for customers. The Pine Technology Acquisition Corp. will be merged with it.
The space is next week.
It is almost here. Next week, December 14 and 15 are when the sessions will begin. It will once again be a virtual conference, so people from all over the world will be able to join.
There are more stories on the website.
