🛰️ MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS

🇨🇳 China’s Landspace conducts vertical liftoff and landing test
Chinese launch startup Landspace conducted a 10-kilometer vertical liftoff, vertical landing test at Jiuquan spaceport Wednesday as it develops a reusable orbital rocket.
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🇺🇸 Interlune details plans to mine Helium-3 from the moon
Interlune aims to be the first company to commercialize natural resources from space, starting with Helium-3 from the Moon. In time, we will harvest other resources such as industrial metals, rare Earth elements, and rocket propellants to support a long-term presence on the Moon and a robust in-space economy.
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🇺🇸 Aerospacelab opens US manufacturing facility
Aerospacelab’s U.S. ambitions have taken the next step with the opening of its satellite manufacturing facility in Torrance, California. A year ago, Aerospacelab opened its U.S. presence in Palo Alto, and now opens the doors to its first factory designed to address its growing U.S. customer base. The company announced the major milestone, Sept. 5.
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🇺🇸 Atomos Space Selects CisLunar Industries for Power Processing Units
CisLunar Industries will provide advanced Power Processing Units (PPUs) for Atomos Space's next-generation orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), Quark. Quark performs rendezvous, docking, capture, and relocation of satellites in various Earth and beyond-Earth orbits.
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💰️ FINANCE, FUNDING AND M&A

🇨🇳 Chinese Launch Startup i-Space Raises $99M Series C
Chinese rocket startup iSpace announced that it secured $99M in Series C and C+ funding to help accelerate the development of its first-stage reusable launch vehicle, Hyperbola-3. 
Xinding Capital and Sichuan Industrial Fund led the Series C. It is the company’s first funding round since it completed a $171M Series B in 2020—according to PitchBook data. 
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🛰️ CORE SERVICES

🇬🇧 UK Space Agency awards funding to two satellite servicing startups
The UK Space Agency has awarded funds to consortiums led by Astroscale and ClearSpace to continue developing a servicer capable of removing two spacecraft from low Earth orbit (LEO) in 2026.
The British subsidiaries of Japan-based Astroscale and Switzerland’s ClearSpace announced about 2.35 million British pounds ($3 million) each in funding before tax Sept. 11 to continue de-risking their robotic arm capture system and debris de-tumbling capabilities.
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🇨🇭 🇺🇸 MDA receives navigation antenna manufacturing contract
Small GEO manufacturer Swissto12 awarded MDA Space a contract to build antenna systems for three HummingSat satellites in the Inmarsat-8 program.
Under the contract announced Tuesday, MDA Space will design and build L-band navigation antennas and design and configure the packaging concepts for the HummingSat Geostationary Orbit (GEO) smallsat platform. The antennas will be built, assembled and tested at MDA Space’s satellite production facility in Montreal.
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🇺🇸 PlanetiQ receives NOAA commercial weather data contract
PlanetiQ received a Delivery Order (DO-4) contract valued at more than $6.5 million to supply NOAA with their proprietary radio occultation (RO) data for a period of one year starting on September 18, 2024.
PlanetiQ will provide 2,200 GNSS-RO profiles per day to support NOAA’s Commercial Weather Data Program. NOAA, the U.S.Air Force, U.S. Navy and other weather prediction centers around the world will use PlanetiQ’s data to ingest into their numerical weather prediction models to improve their weather forecasts.
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🇺🇸 Magma Space awarded AFWERX contract
Magma Space was awarded an AFWERX STTR Phase 2 contract
This $1.8M grant is to allow Magma Space to continue developing their core technology—a magnetically levitated reaction wheel for superior satellite stability and pointing—and bring it closer to a final product
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🛰️ PRODUCT, PARTNERSHIPS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

🇫🇷 OneWeb launches alternative navigation service
OneWeb unveiled a new positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service amid global concerns about GPS vulnerability to jamming and interference in critical sectors such as defense, aviation and emergency services.
The service, called Astra, aims to ensure uninterrupted communications for OneWeb’s satellite broadband customers, even when GPS or other global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals are unavailable or compromised. 
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🇺🇸Boeing plans demo of quantum communication technology
Boeing plans to deploy a small satellite in 2026 to test technology needed for a quantum internet capable of connecting more advanced sensors and computers worldwide, the company announced Sept. 10.
The microwave-sized Q4S satellite is being designed to demonstrate quantum entanglement swapping, a communication technique that transfers information between particles without physically moving them across a distance.
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🇮🇳 Galaxeye signs research contract with government agency to leverage SAR data
GalaxEye announces a joint research project between GalaxEye and the North Eastern Space Applications Centre (NESAC), under the Department of Space, Govt. of India
This study will focus on leveraging drone-based SAR technology to address critical environmental and forestry challenges. From detailed type classification to monitoring deforestation and wildfires, this project aims to revolutionise how we manage and protect our forests.
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🚀 LAUNCH CONTRACTS AND MISSIONS

🇺🇸 Crew Dragon launches on Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission
A SpaceX Crew Dragon is in orbit on a long-awaited private astronaut mission that will attempt the first commercial spacewalk and go higher than any crewed mission in more than 50 years.
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🌎️ CUSTOMERS OF THE SPACE INDUSTRY

🇮🇹 🇦🇷 Telespazio to bring Starlink to Argentina
Telespazio has signed a deal to bring satellite connectivity to Patagonia in Argentina. It is working with Altec, an Argentinian technology and communications solutions provider, to bring Starlink satellite internet to schools and municipal offices in the Argentinian province of Río Negro, in Patagonia. Telespazio announced the initiative on Sept. 9.
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🇫🇮 🇬🇧 Iceye to supply Aon with real-time flood and wildfire data
ICEYE has announced that Aon, a leading global professional services firm, has expanded its data licensing agreement to include ICEYE’s Flood Insights data globally and Wildfire Insights data for the US.
As a result, under the agreement, Aon will incorporate ICEYE’s near real-time flood and wildfire data into its event response capabilities for reinsurance clients, to facilitate the loss analysis of catastrophic events. The high-resolution insights data from ICEYE allows Aon to provide clients with detailed location-level analysis on flood and wildfire insights into damage to properties
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📜 REGULATORY & GOVERNMENT

🇬🇷 🇫🇮 Iceye wins Greek National space project
Iceye will see its persistent monitoring, and natural catastrophe solutions used in Greece thanks to a new contract win. It has signed a contract for the Greek National Satellite Space Project Axis 1.2 (radar program) for the Greek Space Agency and Greek Ministry of Digital Governance, together with the European Space Agency (ESA). The contract win was announced, Sept. 8. Greece is looking to mix its own assets with working with Iceye to improve its capabilities using satellite.
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🇺🇸NASA awards contracts to 7 companies under commercial data acquisition program
NASA has selected eight companies to provide commercial satellite data to support the agency’s Earth science research. NASA announced the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition Program On-Ramp1 Multiple Award contract on Sept. 6 with a maximum cumulative value of $476 million. 
BlackSky, Iceye US, MDA, Pixxel, Planet, Satellogic, Teledyne Brown Engineering, and Tomorrow.io were selected. Under the contract, the companies are eligible to provide Earth observation data and services to NASA in a performance period through Nov. 15, 2028. 
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🇮🇳 Indian regulators delay roll out of satellite internet services
Reports from India say that the various permissions for direct-from-satellite broadband services are again awaiting action. India’s authoritative Financial Express (FE) says that the country’s department of telecommunications (DoT) is unlikely to issue any provisional or interim spectrum to companies such as Eutelsat OneWeb and Jio to commercially roll out their satellite internet services soon.
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