SSI News
NATO extends protection to space
A summit held in Brussels on 14 June has extended NATO’s overarching prerogative to the domain of space, which means that a space-based attack on one or more member nations is now considered an attack against them all. This focus was previously applied, by the 30...
Hungarian company proposes to buy Israeli AMOS Spacecom
Hungarian telecommunications company and aspiring satellite operator 4iG Plc has proposed to buy 51 per cent of Israeli operator AMOS Spacecom. The deal is reportedly valued at US$65 million (Israeli New Shekel NIS215 million). This values AMOS shares 68 per cent...
Three NRO payloads launched by a Minotaur rocket
The USA successfully launched a Minotaur 1 vehicle for the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at 1335 GMT on 15 June from Wallops Island Flight Facility, Virginia, USA. The vehicle was carrying the NRO L-111A, NRO L-111B and NRO L-111C satellites which are owned...
New Shepard seat auctioned for US$28 million
The final bids are in and Blue Origin has raised US$28 million for a seat on the first crewed flight of its New Shepard vehicle. The name of the winner has yet to be released, but he or she will join Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and his younger brother, Mark, on the...
A near-mythological Pegasus rocket launches from Vandenberg carrying military payload
A Pegasus-XL air-launched rocket successfully launched with ODYSSEY (Tacrl2) from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 0811 on 13 June 2021. The Pegasus is operated by Northrop Grumman, and is launched from a modified Stargazer L-1011 aircraft inherited from...
China places four satellites into LEO
China successfully launched a Long March 2D (CZ-2D) vehicle from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, China, at 0303 GMT on 11 June 2021. The vehicle was carrying four satellites: BEIJING 3, a commercial earth observation satellite; HAISI 2, a ocean colour monitoring...
ESA joins the Venus planetary science train with selection of fifth Medium-class mission
ESA decided the winner of its fifth "Medium-class" Cosmic Vision competition on 10 June. Out of the two finalists the Venus-oriented "EnVision" orbiter won out over the gamma-ray burst studying "THESEUS". The initial call for mission concepts was announced in 2016 and...
UKSA gets new CEO
The UK Space Agency announced on 9 June that it had appointed Dr Paul Bate as its new CEO. He will take over from the current CEO, Dr Graham Turnock, from 6 September. Bate has a PhD in particle physics, but little evident experience with space. As a civil...
Two newspace companies secure Series B funding to continue growth (Updated)
Kepler Communications announced the closure of a Series B round of financing valued at US$60 million on 9 June. This amount takes the total funding raised by Kepler to over US$90 million. Kepler is a newspace company building a CubeSat constellation to provide...
Relativity Space raises US$650 million to develop larger, reusable, launch vehicle
Prospective American launch provider Relativity Space has announced that it has completed a Series E funding round raising US$650 million. This follows its previous sizeable Series D funding round which raised US$500 million in November last year. The latest round was...
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