News

Sequel to the investment agreement between Marubeni Corporation and D-Orbit from last November, D-Orbit has announced the successful first closing of its Series C funding round, raising about €100m with Marubeni Corporation leading the round. This consequently cements a long-term commercial collaboration between both parties that will potentially revolutionize the space logistics industry. Furthermore, it extends Marubeni agency mandate for D-Orbit to the entire Southeast Asia.

Voyager Space and Airbus have completed the transaction to create Starlab Space LLC, a transatlantic joint venture that will design, build, and operate the Starlab commercial space station. Alongside the joint venture execution, the Starlab team completed the station-level System Definition Review (SDR), a critical milestone assessing the technical and programmatic accountability of the program.

Sustainability reporting SaaS company Earth Blox has announced its availability on Google Cloud Marketplace. The company provides customers with a scalable and customisable platform to rapidly assess climate and nature-related risks and impacts for millions of assets and facilities worldwide. Google Cloud Marketplace lets users quickly deploy functional software packages that run on Google Cloud and allows customers to easily start up a familiar software package with services like Compute Engine or Cloud Storage, with no manual configuration required.

The schedules for Artemis II and Artemis III have been postponed to September 2025 for Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, and September 2026 for Artemis III, which is planned to land the first astronauts near the lunar South Pole, NASA announced. 

Orbex has announced the appointment of two technology and space sector experts as its new CEO and Executive Chair. Scale-up expert Phillip Chambers will consequently be joining Orbex as its new Chief Executive Officer, and Miguel Belló Mora will be leaving his post as Director General of the Spanish Space Agency to join as Executive Chair.

The possible cause of Peregrine spacecrafts's propulsion anomaly might be a valve between the helium pressurant and the oxidizer, which might have failed to reseal after actuation during inizialization, Astrobotic announced on their X channel. 

By nighttime stateside, early European/Middle East/Africa morning today, and mid-day in Asia, the successfully launched Astrobotic Peregrine lander was confirmed having run into problems terminally dooming Mission 1. Astrobotic’s confirmed the issue reporting on their social media and press releases. And like with any failure, let’s take a healing look at facts and lessons learned. The first lesson is the obvious one: yes, space is hard. 

NASA and the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have announced plans for MBRSC to provide an airlock for Gateway, humanity’s first space station that will orbit the Moon. Under a new implementing arrangement expanding their human spaceflight collaboration with NASA through Gateway, MBRSC will provide Gateway’s Crew and Science Airlock module, as well as a UAE astronaut to fly to the lunar space station on a future Artemis mission.

Rivada Space Networks has partnered with Wiseband, an Emirati satellite services company, to bring secure connectivity solutions to the Middle East region. Based in UAE and operating across the Middle East and Africa, Wiseband provides customized private satellite networking solutions to meet high-performance and stringent security requirements. The company currently has connectivity projects in UAE, KSA, Kuwait and Egypt.

NorthStar Earth & Space Inc. has announced the launch window of the first four of its SSA satellites with Rocket Lab from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand for the “Four Of A Kind” mission no earlier than 18th January between 06:15-07:00 UTC. The launch results from intense collaboration between NorthStar and its partners Spire Global, launch service provider Rocket Lab and mission integration and deployment specialists Exolaunch.