A group of four amateur astronauts poised to become the first privately funded orbital spaceflight crew arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for launch at 8 p.m. EDT on Sept. 15.

BlackSky, a small-satellite-based startup providing geospatial intelligence to government agencies and others, will begin trading as a public company Sept. 10 after a successful reverse-merger with a special purpose acquisition company.

As Sierra Space continues final assembly of the Dream Chaser orbital spaceplane ahead of its launch in late 2022, the Colorado-based company is expanding its partnership with Japanese trading corporation Kanematsu to facilitate development of an international commercial economy in low Earth orbit.

Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov conducted a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Sept. 9 despite a smoke alarm that sounded on the ISS several hours before the excursion.

The Space Force’s Space Enterprise Consortium other transaction authority has grown exponentially as the service has matured and evolved its acquisition process, and now expects to award almost $1 billion dollars this year largely to nontraditional companies.

The satellites will be launched on five Electron flights scheduled to take place in quick succession over the second quarter of 2023.

Luxembourg-based Kleos Space, which aims to provide big-data analytics via space-based radio frequency reconnaissance satellites, said it raised Australian $12.6 million ($9.3 million) by way of a stock sale.

OneWeb’s emerging low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation will pair with AT&T’s terrestrial broadband fiber network to expand connectivity for AT&T business customers, particularly in harder-to-reach locations on Earth, the companies announced Sept. 8.