Varda Space Industries has closed a massive tranche of funding just weeks after its first drug manufacturing capsule returned from orbit.
The pair had an audacious goal to commercialize what until very recently was promising but ultimately small-scale research into the effects of microgravity on pharmaceutical crystals.
Indeed, Varda’s first mission, which returned to Earth in February after 10-months in orbit, does not mark the first time a drug has been crystallized in microgravity.
Astronauts have been conducting protein crystallization experiments in space for decades on the International Space Station and before that, the Space Shuttle.
The startup’s next manufacturing mission will launch later this year, and the team plans to land that spacecraft in Australia.
Few missions more acutely embody the maxim “space is hard” than Atomos Space’s first demonstration mission, which the company has managed to pull back from the brink of disaster — more than once.
That demonstration mission, dubbed Mission-1, launched to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 4.
Deployment was nominal, and Atomos received its first ping from the spacecraft seven minutes after deployment.
After pulling some strings, they were able to get on the phone with the chief systems engineer of satellite communications company Iridium.
Atomos’ spacecraft were moving too fast, and in direct opposition, such that they couldn’t perform the data “handshake” with those Iridium satellites to actually transmit information back down to Earth.
Apex Space just moved one step closer to its goal of upending satellite bus manufacturing, with the startup announcing on Tuesday that its first vehicle is healthy on orbit.
The company launched its first satellite, the first of a class Apex is calling “Aries,” on SpaceX’s Transporter-10 rideshare mission on Monday.
“That will be incredibly valuable over the next many years while the satellite stays in orbit,” Cinnamon said.
Apex, whose backers include Andreessen Horowitz and Shield Capital, is building productized satellite buses to solve the satellite bus “bottleneck” facing the space industry.
In addition to Aries, an ESPA-class spacecraft bus that can support payloads up to 100 kilograms, the company is also developing two larger bus product lines, Nova and Comet.
In an e-mail exchange, Babylon Micro-Farms CEO Alexander Olesson tells me “we’ll have these in every school and apartment one day.” It’s a nice vision, and really the level of belief/commitment required to run a startup – particularly in a field as oft-fraught at vertical farming.
With a price point of $6,500, howver, the STEM Garden isn’t likely arriving in too many homes in the near term.
Virginia-based Babylon Micro-farms has long distinguished itself from much of the vertical farming world with its focus on smaller spaces and the new system further shrinks that footprint.
Where previous models were focused on higher ed, the STEM Garden is specifically tackling K-9, which tends not to have as deep pockets.
The STEM garden is up for pre-order starting today and will start shipping to classes in Q2.
Sierra Space has completed a key test of its inflatable space habitat, as the company progresses toward launching and operating a private space station with Blue Origin before the end of the decade.
The “ultimate burst pressure” test of the inflatable module was conducted at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
The softgoods that make up the LIFE habitat include Vectran straps, which are made out of high-performance polymers, and other materials.
Although the burst test is certainly suggestive, it would be a mistake to compare the LIFE module to a balloon.
Sierra said this year will be one of “aggressive” testing at both sub- and full-scale of the other layers of the habitat.
Axiom Space is gearing up to launch its third fully private astronaut mission to the International Space Station.
Per NASA rules, all private missions to the ISS must be led by a former NASA astronaut.
Houston-based Axiom’s first private mission launched in April 2022 and the second followed in May 2023.
But Axiom is not stopping at private astronaut missions — as if that wasn’t ambitious enough.
Instead, the company aims to eventually attach commercial modules to the ISS, that Axiom owns and operates, which would detach by the end of the decade to become a free-flying Axiom Space Station.
Twitter is continuing to try to make money by expanding its paid service. The company has now added six new countries to the list of areas where users can subscribe…
