How you can use last week’s headlines to make the most of this week’s SmallSat conference

Precious Payload Weekly Smallsat News: August 1 — 9

Here’s what you need to know about last week’s headlines on the second day of SmallSat conference

Highlights

🇺🇸Astra cancels all the launches of Rocket 3.3 vehicle series. The company plans to focus on developing a bigger Rocket 4, whose next flight might be in 2024. 🇺🇸NASA is looking for a new launch partner for giving a ride to six TROPICS mission cubesats aiming to reach an altitude of 550 kilometers and an inclination of about 30 degrees. [SpaceNews]

🇺🇸Momentus confirmed that it successfully deployed four more 🇪🇸FOSSA Systems pocketqubes from the Vigoride-3, in addition to two that were deployed earlier in late May, three days after its launch on the SpaceX Transporter-5 rideshare mission. There were seven FOSSA’s satellites aboard, all in all, and one more pocketqube from an undisclosed company and a 2U SelfieSat by a Norwegian student space organization, Orbit NTNU. Another payload, BroncoSat 1 by 🇺🇸Bronco Space (CalPoly), which launch was managed by Momentus, was deployed from a second port on Transporter-5. [SpaceNews]

Headlines

🇨🇦Metaspectral and 🇺🇸HySpeed Computing select 🇺🇸Nanoracks to launch their Earth observation payload, OPTICA, with a SpaceX CRS-27 mission, and deploy from the ISS in early 2023. [Bloomberg] 

🇺🇸Spire Global’s upcoming 6U cubesat will host an Earth-imaging payload, Hancom-2, by 🇰🇷Hancom Group and will be launched by the second half of 2023. [SpaceNews] 

🇺🇸NASA’s PUNCH mission carrying four smallsats to study the Sun’s corona transitions into the solar wind will be launched in April 2025 on the rideshare of its SPHEREx mission via Falcon9. [SpaceNews]

🇨🇳China launched its second quantum satellite, Jinan 1, from the 🇨🇳Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center to support quantum communication and conduct quantum key distribution experiments in LEO. [SmallsatNews]

🇨🇳China launched a terrestrial ecosystem carbon monitoring satellite, TECIS 1, and two other satellites, HEAD 2G by 🇨🇳HEAD Aerospace Group and Minhang Youth Satellite designed by students, from the 🇨🇳Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. [Space.com]

Funding: 

🇳🇿Zenno Astronautics raises $6.58M for their electromagnetic propulsion system technology for propelling spacecraft with their first launch in Q4 of 2023. [TechCrunch] 

🇳🇿Dawn Aerospace gets awarded €200,000 by the 🇪🇺ESA to accelerate work on their green bi-propellant thrusters, B20 and B1, for LEO satellites. [SatNews]

Smallsat manufacturer 🇺🇸Xona Space Systems raised $15M funding from ventures including 🇺🇸Lockheed Martin to help increase its manpower and progress work on its second prototype navigation satellite constellation, Muninn, which will be launched in early 2023. [SpaceNews] 

🇨🇳Yunyao Yuhang raises $14.8M in funding for its next project of the 80-satellite constellation for launch in 2023 that will provide data for global weather forecasting. [SpaceNews]

Check out Precious Payload Weekly Smallsat News: July 25 — 31