Portfolio Company News
Xplore
General Space News
Globalstar agrees terms with “global customer” for terrestrial connectivity
Globalstar has signed a term sheet with a "large, global customer" to deploy some of its S-band spectrum for terrestrial use in the United States and elsewhere. It is believed that Apple may be the wholesale buyer of this capacity with the release of their iPhone 14 later this year. Globalstar also recently registered plans for a constellation of over 3,000 satellites in LEO. There is some speculation that the service will only be capable of sending Apple Push Notification messages to the iPhone rather than full SMS or MMS messages.
DoD inspector general finds nothing improper in U.S. Space Command basing decision
The Pentagon's inspector general concluded that the decision to move U.S. Space Command headquarters to Alabama in January 2021 was reasonable and not improperly influenced by politics.
SpaceX training begins this month for first commercial spacewalk mission
Jared Isaacman, billionaire businessman, pilot, and commander of the Polaris Dawn mission, said the training will begin this month for the private astronauts scheduled to fly on and conduct a spacewalk from, a Crew Dragon spacecraft. This is the first of three missions Isaacman has booked through SpaceX. This would be the first purely commercial spacewalk since NASA is not involved in this mission.
Feast your eyes on the first image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way
Scientists have produced the first image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, which is over 4 million times the mass of the Sun, courtesy of the international Event Horizon Telescope collaboration. The supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, was initially discovered in 1933 by physicist Karl Jansky.
Humanity will go to Mars 'in this decade,' SpaceX president predicts
SpaceX President and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, told CNBC that she predicts that a crewed mission to Mars could happen sooner than we think. SpaceX is developing Starship, a huge, reusable rocket, to go to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Starship will also be sending the first NASA crewed lunar lander to the Moon’s south pole in 2025 for the Artemis program.
Jeff Bezos’ company, Blue Origin, donated 2 seats on its New Shepard rocket to nonprofit Robin Hood’s, auction to benefit New York City. Citadel founder Ken Griffin placed the winning bid of $8 million and subsequently donated his spot to two educators.
Autonomous drones fly through Chinese bamboo forest
Video of a swarm of drones navigating through an uncontrolled environment as part of an experiment led by scientists from Zhejiang University in China.
Other Space News
This week's picks of space sector news compiled from Jeff Foust's FIRST UP newsletter are:
Virgin Galactic is delaying the start of commercial suborbital spaceflights again.
Stratospheric ballooning company World View says it has signed up 1,000 customers.
NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has encountered power issues.
South Korea's new president wants to make the country a major space power by 2035.
Boeing clashes with key supplier ahead of Starliner spacecraft launch
A Space Force general said the use of Starlink in Ukraine shows the benefits of megaconstellations.
Two senators have introduced a bill authorizing a Space National Guard.