The six-seater New Shepard—flying with a full cabin for the first time—lifted off from Blue Origin’s spaceport near Van Horn, Texas, at 9 a.m. local time.

An additional friction stir welding facility in Thales Alenia Space’s Turin factory is helping meet increased demand from space station operators for pressurized modules.

Tomorrow.io—the former ClimaCell weather services company that rebranded and announced a plan to launch and operate a constellation of relatively small satellites by 2022—will go public via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company. 

The plan to begin production in the UK would likely mean the closure of OneWeb’s Florida-based facility which used automation to produce its first generation of satellites. 

Orbex has commissioned Motive Offshore to fabricate the launchpad at the company’s test site, a former Royal Air Force airfield at Kinloss, Scotland.  

The launch from New Zealand marked BlackSky's third launch in 21 days to double the size of its constellation from six spacecraft to 12.

After a successful launch and 7-hr. ride into geosynchronous orbit, a long-awaited optical communications relay experiment, designed and financed by NASA, is in position to begin a technology demonstration in March.

The Series A round will go toward accelerating Israel-based HiSKy’s technology development and market outreach for its satellite terminals aimed at the Internet of Things market.