Kendra R Chamberlain, Author at The Enterprise Orbit

NanoRacks courting Asian, European customers with business development partnership

NanoRacks is pursuing more international commercial and government customers for its space station offerings, amid a global explosion in new commercial space ventures and activities. The company is opening up its first office outside the U.S. with the hopes that an expanded presence in Europe will help it tap into a growing customer base across Europe and Asia. “The exploration industry is growing at an extraordinary pace,” Jeff Manber, CEO

Astrobotic’s lunar delivery service set to launch in 2020

Lunar logistics startup Astrobotic is hoping to become the world’s first lunar delivery service. The company, spun out of a project at Carnegie Mellon University, was launched about a decade ago in order to participate in the Google Lunar XPrize. “Our goal is to make the moon accessible to the world,” John Thornton, Astrobotic’s CEO, told The Downlink. “We are building a DHL delivery service to take payloads from all

LEO HTS operators will struggle with ‘feasible business models’

A new report out from Northern Sky Research (NSR) predicts a “mixed outcome” for large high-throughput satellite (HTS) constellations. As we have previously reported, there are five companies now planning to launch LEO satellite mega-constellations, with the hopes of providing high speed, low latency broadband around the globe. These providers have drawn a “compelling level of optimism,” NSR said, pointing to the large amounts of funding being poured into these

Governments step up funding for private space startups

Last year proved to be a seminal year for the commercial space industry, and there’s no signs of things cooling down in 2018. So far, the explosion of investment made in private space companies has been largely focused on launch vehicles. According to a Space Angels’ report, 72% of capital invested in space went to launch capabilities in 2017. But in 2018, we’re seeing more funding and support pop up

Virgin Orbit considers satellite maintenance, orbital debris services

Virgin Orbit, the small satellite launch arm of Richard Branson’s growing space empire, is planning to offer expanded services for the small satellite launch market. Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart has said the company is looking at market opportunities such as satellite maintenance and orbital debris removal for its clients. The pool of small satellite launch vehicles has grown significantly over the past few years – though many of them

SpacePharma’s mini-labs enable microgravity research on nanosatellites

SpacePharma is expanding access to microgravity for research and development with its mGnify platform, which offers remotely-controlled, end-to-end mini labs. The labs can be used to conduct research on the ISS, in parabolic or suborbital flights, and can even attach to small satellites. The company, headquartered in Courgenay, Switzerland, is working with a number of academic and commercial partners in microgravity research on the ISS and other platforms. [caption id="attachment_1489"

Exos gears up for test flight of SARGE

Exos Aerospace Systems and Technologies is angling to make its debut in the suborbital launch market. The company has spent the past decade and $14 million to build a reusable suborbital launch vehicle, dubbed SARGE: Suborbital Autonomous Rocket with Guidance. SARGE has passed a number of testing milestones, and the company is now gearing up for its first flight test from Spaceport America in May. The Exos vehicle’s provenance is

LEO satellite broadband will be disruptive, if successful

A new crop of non-geostationary satellites could see the emergence of a new broadband market in low Earth orbit. SpaceX, Boeing, OneWeb, LeoSat and Telesat are five would-be satellite broadband service providers that have received FCC authorization for deploying satellite broadband in the US. If successful, these providers are poised to disrupt the current satellite broadband market, and perhaps even terrestrial fixed services in some areas. Satellite broadband is by

NASA mulls next steps in ISS privatization

After the Trump administration called for end to NASA’s funding of ISS by 2025 earlier this year, NASA officials are considering what to do next. The president’s budget allocates $900 million over the next five years to help transition the ISS to the private sector, with $150 million being allocated to NASA in 2019, “to enable the development and maturation of commercial entities and capabilities which will ensure that commercial

Congress calls into question NASA’s public-private partnerships

Members of the House of Representatives’ space subcommittee weren’t happy to hear that NASA’s private partners are slipping behind schedule on the development of the next generation of spacecraft that’ll carry astronauts to space. Boeing’s VP and program manager, John Mulholland and SpaceX’s VP of Build and Flight Reliability, Hans Koenigsmann, met a tough crowd at the committee hearing, as members voiced their disappointment at the two companies’ progress in