Michael joined Guy Adami and Danny Moses on their 'On the Tape' podcast to discuss investing in the space industry
Portfolio Company News
If you’re in or traveling to Chicago and in need of some cold-weather gear, go check out OROS’ first physical retail store! In other Oros news, they scored a $10M contract with the DoD.
SpaceX
A Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the International Space Station Thursday
SpaceX successfully launched the Crew-5 mission to the ISS Wednesday to kick off their 5-month mission in space. Crew-5 include NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Russian Cosmonaut Anna Kikina. Crew-4 is set to return to earth in about a week.
General Space News
AE Industrial Partners announced that they have acquired a majority stake in York Space Systems alongside BlackRock Private Equity Partners. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. York Space Systems then announced they had been awarded a contract from the Pentagon for up to $200M to build experimental satellites for the military’s Space Development Agency (SDA).
Large Constellations of Satellites: Mitigating Environmental and Other Effects
A General Accounting Office report on large satellite constellations found that there are ~5,500 active satellites as of spring 2022 with an estimate of that growing by another 58,000 satellites by 2030 mainly due to large constellations in LEO. This could lead to potential environmental and other effects such as an increase in orbital debris, emissions into the upper atmosphere, and disruption of astronomy - which all need further study.
Roscosmos official supports continued cooperation with NASA on ISS
Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos struck a more conciliatory tone than Roscosmos has done in recent history suggesting the new head of Roscosmos, Yury Borisov, feels he has a mandate to preserve the program. The complete change in rhetoric from Roscosmos does suggest that previous bellicose statements from Dmitry Rogozin did not represent official Russian policy so much as Dmitry’s own personal opinion. There is still a significant risk that Russia itself does something that causes the ISS partners to decide they can’t work with Russia at all regardless of what Borisov might be saying.
John Deere Releases Satcom RFP for Always-On, Connected Agricultural Solution
John Deere is seeking a strategic partnership to connect their new machines and retrofitted machines with satellite service and ruggedized satellite terminals to create a connectivity solution for their customers, most of which operate in rural regions with low population densities. Estimates put the market opportunity at about 5,000 new machines annually and about 40,000 machines that could be retrofitted for a satellite solution. John Deere already works with satellites in its precision agricultural technology which sends reprocessed signals over Inmarsat’s L-band network which allows their tractors to drive themselves, place seeds, and develop accurate geospatial maps.
Other Space News
Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket reached orbit for the first time early Saturday.
NASA announced late Friday it will not make another Artemis 1 launch attempt before mid-November.
The Space Development Agency (SDA) formally became part of the U.S. Space Force on Saturday.
NASA assigned two astronauts to the first operational Boeing Starliner commercial crew mission.
An Atlas 5 launched two communications satellites for SES Tuesday.
The Space Force is studying options to procure more commercial space domain awareness data.
A Sherpa tug launched a month ago carrying a Boeing payload has yet to start raising its orbit.
A couple liked a suborbital spaceflight so much that they plan to fly again