Hello and welcome back to Max Q!
In this issue:
- Voyager Space’s new funding
- Orbital Sidekick’s hyperspectral ambitions
- News from The Exploration Company, Capella Space, LeoLabs and more
Voyager Space, a company developing a private space station, has raised $80.2 million in new capital. The new funding comes as Voyager continues its development of the station, Starlab, which is no doubt an enormously capital-intensive undertaking.
The funding includes participation from NewSpace Capital, Midway Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other documents viewed by . Seraphim Space also participated, has confirmed. The funding was filed with the SEC on January 27.
Image Source: Voyager Space
Historically, oil and gas companies have monitored pipeline leaks using inefficient, expensive methods: workers equipped with handheld optical gas imaging cameras, for example. Or, as Orbital Sidekick CEO Dan Katz put it in a recent interview with , “a young pilot sticking their head out the window of a crop-duster.”
“There’s really no persistent, objective, high-accuracy monitoring service that’s available to operators today,” he said. So he and Orbital Sidekick co-founder Tushar Prabhakar set out to create one. Their startup’s solution is a data analytics product that generates intelligence using a constellation of satellites equipped with hyperspectral sensors — and it’s caught the energy industry’s attention.
Image Credits: Orbital Sidekick
More news from TC and beyond
- Axiom Space’s private missions to the International Space Station will be mostly crewed by government customers, rather than privately paying individuals. (SpaceNews)
- Capella Space launched a defense-focused subsidiary, Capella Federal, as demand for satellite imagery heats up. ()
- Embedded Ventures closed a $100 million fund to invest in early-stage startups that can serve commercial and defense sectors, in industries including advanced manufacturing, space operations and digital engineering. (CNBC)
- The Exploration Company closed €40 million ($43.9 million) in new funding as it seeks to commercialize its reusable space capsule. (PitchBook)
- The Indian Space Research Organization released more details on the causes behind the botched launch for the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle last August. (ISRO)
- LeoLabs, a space domain awareness and orbital mapping company, expanded its network of ground-based space radars with a new site in Western Australia. (LeoLabs)
- Relativity Space’s Terran 1 has a static fire test still to complete before its first launch. (Tim Ellis)
- Sierra Space completed a third stress test of its Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) Habitat, with the unit’s pressure shell bursting after over 150 hours, a timescale that exceed’s NASA’s certification requirements. (Sierra Space)
- Virgin Orbit was thrown yet another lifeline from Richard Branson’s Virgin Investments Ltd. (Ars Technica)
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