🛰️ MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS

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💰️ FINANCE, FUNDING AND M&A

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FOSSA Systems has raised €6.3 million in a Series A funding round to support the expansion of its IoT satellite constellation.
The funding round was co-led by Indico Capital Partners and Nabtesco Technology Ventures, with additional support from Newmind Venture and Sabadell Venture Capital.
The full satellite constellation aims to offer low-latency communications globally, catering to various industries including agriculture, maritime, logistics, energy, and national security.
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CesiumAstro, a startup specializing in phased array communications payloads, raised $65 million in a Series B+ investment round announced June 18.
CesiumAstro plans to expand its staff to bolster research and development and manufacturing both domestically and internationally.
Trousdale Ventures led the latest funding round. The Development Bank of Japan and Quanta Computer matched Trousdale’s investment. Additional participants include Kleiner Perkins, Lavrock Ventures, L3Harris Technologies, InMotion Ventures, Matter Venture Partners, MESH Ventures and Assembly Ventures.
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🛰️ CORE SERVICES

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Lockheed Martin will develop and build the next generation of U.S. geostationary weather satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under a contract announced June 18.
The contract, awarded by NASA on behalf of NOAA, covers three Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellites and options for four additional spacecraft. With options, the estimated value of the contract is $2.27 billion.
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🛰️ PRODUCT, PARTNERSHIPS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

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🚀 LAUNCH CONTRACTS AND MISSIONS

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SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink broadband satellites from California on Tuesday night (June 18), ending a 10-day spaceflight drought for the company.
A Falcon 9 rocket topped with 20 Starlink spacecraft, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Tuesday at 11:40 p.m. EDT (8:40 p.m. local California time; 0040 GMT on June 19).
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🌎️ SPACE INDUSTRY ←→ DOWNSTREAM

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Airbus and Lufthansa Technik have joined forces to get astronauts ready for Starlab — the commercial space station of the future.
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📜 REGULATORY & GOVERNMENT

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Exploration Laboratories, a startup focused on space resources, will accelerate work on technology to autonomously capture space objects, thanks to a $1.9 million Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) from SpaceWERX.
Southern California-based ExLabs announced a $1.7 million SpaceWERX Small Business Innovation Research contract in 2023 for autonomous capture and acquisition technology. The additional $1.9 million, split between government and private investors facilitates the transition to prototype development and testing of the ACQR platform, paving the way for its orbital test flight.
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The governments of the United States and India announced June 17 they are moving ahead with cooperation on human spaceflight that would include flying an Indian astronaut to the International Space Station, although with few details on who would fly and when.
The White House released a fact sheet regarding a meeting of the U.S.-India initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology (iCET), held June 17 in New Delhi.
In space, the fact sheet hailed “securing a carrier for the first-ever joint effort between NASA and ISRO astronauts at the International Space Station.” This appeared to reference an announcement last June that the United States would train Indian astronauts with the goal “of mounting a joint effort to the International Space Station in 2024.”
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The U.S. Space Force has embarked on yet another attempt to modernize ground systems used to command and control military satellites. This time, it’s turning to the commercial sector and the cloud with a program called Rapid Resilient Command and Control (R2C2).
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The European Space Agency has announced that the development of both versions of its Galileo Second Generation satellites has reached an important milestone with the successful completion of the Critical Design Reviews.
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