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Weekly Recap #23 + Satshow Interview
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Weekly Recap #23 + Satshow Interview

Here's everything that happened in the space industry for the week of February 22-28! Plus a special interview with Satshow Chairman Jeffrey Hill.

Main Topics

Space Times will be at Satshow 2026!

  • Listen to this week’s podcast to get a discount code for the conference

  • Hear part of our interview with conference Chairman Jeffrey Hill

  • Reach out to us if you’re interested in meeting and/or receiving media coverage

Comms

  • Aalyria raised a $100M Series B, led by Battery Ventures and J2 Ventures, valuing Aalyria at $1.3 billion to fund the deployment of their optical communications products. [source]

  • AST SpaceMobile was awarded a $30M prime contract by the U.S. Space Development Agency to develop a prototype TACSATCOM for future tranches of the PWSA as part of their HALO Europa program. [source]

  • Starlink Updates:

    • Kyivstar hits 3M subscribers for its Starlink direct to cell offering in Ukraine, totalling 1.2M SMS messages sent. [source]

    • Virgin Media O2 launches Starlink direct-to-smartphone service in the UK to provide mobile data to apps including WhatsApp, Messenger, and Google Maps. [source]

  • The European Investment Bank extended €25M in venture debt financing to Luxembourg-based D2D satellite operator OQ Technology. The company will use the money to develop and launch 20+ satellites in the next two years. [source]

  • Sceye unveils SceyeCELL, their high-altitude platform for space-to-ground cell relay planned to fly in summer of 2026. [source]

  • French ground-station-as-a-service startup Skynopy won a €500K award from the French government to integrate a ground antenna, owned and operated by the Kenya Space Agency, into its commercial network. [source]

AI

  • Sophia Space announced the close of a $10M Seed round led by Alpha Funds, KDDI Green Partners Fund, and Unlock Venture Partners to accelerate development of the company’s next-generation orbital computing systems and proprietary thermal technology. [source]

  • CesiumAstro acquires Vidrovr to embed AI in their communications systems for real-time multimodal signal analysis. [source]

  • Seekr and Wyvern partner to launch SeekrGeo, an AI-driven hyperspectral reasoning engine for extracting usable intelligence from raw satellite data. [source]

  • NordSpace founder backs Wyvern with their new Canada-focused venture arm. [source]

  • Boeing announced in recent ground tests that they demonstrated a large language model running on commercial off-the-shelf hardware that examines telemetry and reports in natural language on the health of a satellite [source]

Propulsion

  • The Space Force pauses national security launches on ULA’s Vulcan while the failure of the solid booster on the last launch is investigated. [source]

  • NASA revises plans for future Artemis missions: Artemis III will land lunar rovers instead of astronauts, block upgrades are cancelled, and launch cadence is increased to once per year. [source]

  • Phantom has just acquired Vector and all of its remaining assets to reduce Phantom’s expected CAPEX requirements for their Daytona rocket. [source]

  • ISPTech closed a €5.5M Seed round led by Join Capital to expand their manufacturing, complete critical infrastructure tests, and speed up the commercial rollout of their non‑toxic in‑space propulsion. [source]

  • Rocket Lab’s failure of their propellant tank during testing in January will delay the first launch of their Neutron rocket to at least the fourth quarter of 2026. [source]

  • X-Bow Systems announced that they’ve successfully tested their full scale 34.5-inch Ballesta strategic class solid rocket motor. [source]

Business Moves

  • Charter Space launched Charter Interplanetary Risk Corporation insurance brokerage to help space companies secure coverage for their missions and underlying businesses. [source]

  • Rocket Lab acquires Optical Support Inc. to strengthen optical engineering capabilities for the Starlite system and other optical payloads critical to their PWSA contracts. [source]

  • Seraphim exceeds $100M Target for their latest early stage SpaceTech venture fund. [source]

  • Intuitive Machines announced a $175M strategic equity investment to invest in comms and data-processing tech. [source]

  • Vantor announced a follow-on contract with the US Army worth up to $217M to continue work on the service’s One World Terrain program, designed to train and rehearse missions using high-precision, immersive 3D terrain. [source]

Tech Advances

  • LambdaVision Inc., which manufactures artificial retinas in LEO, announced that it has pre-booked manufacturing time onboard Starlab’s commercial space station. [source]

  • HEO partnered with UNSW Canberra Space to perform Australia’s first rendezvous and proximity operations mission with their Continuum-1 satellite, supported by funding from Defence Trailblazer. [source]

  • Endurosat announces partnership with AIRMO to launch 12+ methane monitoring satellites in early 2027. [source]

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