Military/Aerospace Electronics

EnduroSat, a satellite data services company, has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by the investment firm CEECAT Capital, which focuses on high growth markets in Central and Eastern Europe. Existing investors, for example, the German Seed fund Freigeist Capital, also joined the round. EnduroSat is headquartered in Luxembourg but has its main R&D operations in ...

Working on the Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) Mission, engineers at the European Space Agency have managed to remotely fix the operation of its Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna. Following a successful launch of the craft in mid-April, for four weeks the 16-metre-long boom couldn’t escape its mounting bracket, as was planned. Flight controllers suspected that a small pin ...

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has selected a joint research team from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the Phase I winner of its recent Grand Challenge. The competition, to give its full name, is Active Artificial Intelligence, or AI, Planners for Chemistry/Materials Optimization and Discovery Grand Challenge. The idea was ...

Viasat, the U.S. communications company, has announced that the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) has given the green light for its acquisition of London-based Inmarsat. The conclusion of the CMA’s Phase II review has confirmed its provisional findings that the proposed transaction does not raise competition concerns. This decision, an important milestone towards completion of the deal, allows Viasat ...

ClearSpace and Arianespace have signed a launch contract for ClearSpace-1, the first active debris removal mission that will capture and deorbit a derelict space debris object of more than 100 kg. It will use the new European light launcher Vega C to release ClearSpace’s spacecraft into a sun-synchronous drift orbit for commissioning and critical tests. The servicer spacecraft will then ...

Spire Global, the space analytics company with offices in Glasgow, has been awarded a contract by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to demonstrate wildfire detection methods from space for the agency’s WildFireSat mission. The contract forms the initial part of the mission, which aims to monitor from space, on a daily basis – via infrared sensors – all active wildfires ...

Nasa has selected five companies to take part in the Space Weather Next Lagrange 1 Series (L1 Series) Coronagraph (COR) Phase A Study, for contracts totalling approximately $6m. The aim is that the L1 series will “extend continuity and resiliency” of real-time solar imagery and solar wind measurements. The contracted companies are: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL), EO Vista, ...

Maxar Technologies has been bought by the U.S. private equity firm Advent International, alongside minority investor British Columbia Investment (BCI). The space technology company, which builds communications and Earth Observation satellites, has now gone private and will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (and it will also be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange). Advent and ...

A group of European space and telecommunications are forming a partnership to bid to support the future European satellite constellation IRIS² (Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite). With a multi-orbit architecture, interoperable with terrestrial networks, IRIS² is intended to improve European connectivity infrastructures – for governments, businesses and people – in terms of security and resilience. The European ...

Satlantis Microsats, a provider of high-res optical payloads for small satellites, has bought a controlling interest in SuperSharp Space Systems, a University of Cambridge spin-off specialising in thermal infrared payloads for Earth Observation satellites. The size of the investment was undisclosed, with the UK Secretary of State having already approved the transaction, back in March. Satlantis says the agreement will ...