Starbridge Weekly Space Update for 2/6/2023

Welcome to 2023! 

Starbridge Team Update

Michael and Steven were in Miami last week at the iConnections Global Alts conference locking in Starbridge Fund III commitments.

The first month of the year is always an incredibly busy time for any finance company so we are running a bit late in our weekly space news update. So here's a recap of what's been happening in January 2023 along with Starbridge's predictions of what's to come.

As you may remember, Michael was in India a few months ago participating in the first Indo-Pacific space technology conclave hosted by IIT Madras and sponsored by the US State Department. The results of that have been published in this white paper that was recently released. Starbridge looks forward to working with commercial space companies in the various participating countries. 

Portfolio Company News

The year began with the Transporter-6 launch that included Umbra and Lynk satellites. Both companies report satellites are performing well. 

Avealto

Strong interest and public statements of support from both senior officials and regulators in Indonesia have resulted in the large island country becoming the ideal first target for the commercial roll out of Avealto’s novel high-altitude communications platform this year. “Indonesia is the 4th most populous country in the world with over 6,000 populated islands. Avealto Wireless Infrastructure technology can provide high quality and cost-effective connections to the most remote regions of Indonesia, to fully close the digital divide in that nation.” - Walt Anderson, Avealto CEO. Expect additional announcements in the coming weeks. 

In the meantime, Avealto has opened up a new funding round to support their build-out of service, so let Starbridge know if you want to take a look at this along with our deep-dive research into the company. 

 Axiom

In a recent call with reporters, Axiom CEO Mike Suffredin said “I expect that Ax-3 will be largely a country customer kind of flight with our professional astronaut,” he said, which will be repeated on Ax-4. “I think that, between those two flights, maybe one private individual will fly.” 

ISS partners have approved, but not named, the crew of AX-2 which will fly in May. While one member of the crew will be John Shoffner, the other two crew members have not been announced yet. They are widely expected to be two astronauts from Saudi Arabia but the announcement of who they are is being left to the Saudi government. 

Amir Bachman, Axiom CIO, delivered a talk about innovating in microgravity at Boryung's inaugural Care in Space Demo Day

In related good news for all of the Commercial LEO Destinations (CLD) program participants, NASA has maxed out its utilization of its share of the International Space Station given crew and cargo limitations.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Things seem to be progressing to plan as CFS continues to build out its SPARC demonstration facilities. We wanted to point out a recent podcast interview of MIT nuclear scientist Dennis Whyte.  Dr. Whyte has been working with CFS for years and has some great insights into both the company and the overall field of fusion energy that anyone interested in this topic should listen to.

Lynk

Lynk launched two more satellites on Transporter-6 in January and both spacecraft are in final checkout. Lynk is also finalizing the installation of a ground station in Hawaii. 

Offworld.AI

Offworld and Saudi Arabian state-owned mining company Ma’aden signed an agreement last week “to initiate the first deployment of autonomous industrial mining robots in Ma’aden’s mines”. On a possibly related note, Saudia Arabia, a recent signatory to the Artemis Accords, has withdrawn from the Moon Treaty.

Orbital Sidekick 

Orbital Sidekick Raises $10M, Preps for Launch of Hyperspectral Constellation - Payload

Space Forge

Due to Virgin Orbit’s launch failure in January, Space Forge’s ForgeStar-0 was unable to complete its in-space testing. Work is already underway on a new satellite - ForgeStar-1 - and it is 12 to 16 weeks away from being built and will launch later this year. Co-founder and CEO Josh Western said, "It's a much more capable satellite than ForgeStar-0. ForgeStar-1 is about 10 times the size, and it's both a demonstration of our re-entry technology and in-space manufacturing technology.”

SpaceX

SpaceX performed a wet dress rehearsal of the fully stacked Starship recently and is preparing for the first static fire of the Super Heavy booster. This will be the first time that all 33 sea-level optimized Raptor engines will be fired on the Super Heavy and a record for the most number of engines firing on a single rocket. The previous record holder was the Soviet N1 with 30 engines but there was never a successful launch. 

Xplore 

Xplore multi-sensor satellite to offer space data products under NOAA imagery license

General Space News

• Iridium, Qualcomm Announce Satellite-to-Snapdragon Partnership - Payload

• Exclusive: Euroconsult Values 2022 Space Economy at $464B - Payload

The doom and gloom continues while the aerospace and defense sector sees the second busiest year ever.  Space SPACs are once again in the news with the announcement of World View's SPAC offer led by Leo Holdings Corp. II in a $350M deal. The Intuitive Machines SPAC received a buy rating recently with a $14 price target. The merger is expected to close later this quarter. 

The Department of Defense threw a bit of cold water on two parts of the space sector with statements that it has no plans to return to the era of large, expensive satellites and no plans to go beyond GEO and will only support military operations on Earth. While the first statement was already well understood by the sector, the second was a blow to those who saw Space Force as a way to bootstrap cislunar transportation systems to support intelligence and reconnaissance missions. 

NASA named A.C. Charania, a long-time commercial space advocate and executive, as NASA’s new chief technologist. Charania is the former VP of product strategy at Reliable Robotics and has contributed to lunar and launch programs at Blue Origin and Virgin Orbit. This new hire is a departure by NASA from its previous strategy of two-year rotations of senior academics in aerospace engineering. Senior leadership at NASA wanted someone from the commercial sector who could educate the NASA workforce on how and why commercial companies were beginning to innovate faster than NASA could. 

Frank Lucas (R-OK-3), newly named chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, says he will seek a new NASA authorization bill as quickly as possible. Lucas seems to also have plans for the Office of Space Commerce. He released a draft bill in the last days of the previous Congress that would elevate the Office of Space Commerce to a direct report to the Commerce Secretary. 

For those not paying attention to some of SpaceX’s subtler moves, SpaceX's Starshield initiative shows the company wants to take on bigger roles in national security. The article does seem to bury the lead since it is clear that SpaceX is going to try and take marekt share away from every single profitable sector in LEO if their competition isn’t willing or able to move fast enough to defend it. 

A paper criticizing the White House’s space policy framework is circulating some space policy circles. It is a well-stated analysis of how US space policy is still playing the Prestige Science game while everyone else is implementing hardcore industrial policy.

Starbridge 2023 Predictions

1. The first Starship flight attempt will occur in Q1 2023 - with just making it off the launch pad considered to be a huge success; the following Starship flight attempt will be late Q2 but it will fail on re-entry; and the first successful Starship flight to orbit will be in late Q4 of this year

2. One of the four lunar landers slated for 2023 will successfully land

3. An important space policy debate makes it to the minds of government leaders in 2023, focused on when and how much to regulate space; especially in regards to human spaceflight

4. There will be a test launch from an offshore floating launch platform in 2023. High cadence operational launch begins moving to offshore platforms starting in 2024.

5. Two space SPACs will either be acquired at the cost of debt or liquidated in bankruptcy

6. The War in Ukraine will continue into 2024 and EO companies will continue to benefit

7. A company will successfully launch and return intact a satellite from orbit

8. Russian relations with other ISS partners stabilize, at least in regards to space operations

9. Boeing reduces its human spaceflight business to simply servicing Artemis, and abandons Starliner

10. The explosion of small quantum communications and PNT companies slows but funding for in-space demonstrations increases

11. Private space funding increases and differentiates between SpaceX and everyone else

12. On average, seed stage valuations will largely maintain their previous highs while a ‘flat round’ will be considered the new ‘up round’ for later-stage companies this year

13. The inflation rate at the end of 2023 will be at or just above 6% which will begin to affect Federal budgets and discretionary spending will feel the most pressure

Bonus:

1. Jeff Foust will disclose that all of his articles written in 2023 were actually written by ChatGPT

2. Both Trump and Biden were found to have hidden top-secret documents about alien communications technology deep in their sock drawers

Other Space News

• Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham has died.

• Iridium enters service agreement for direct-to-smartphone satellite service - SpaceNews

• The United States and Japan signed a agreement establishing a framework for future cooperation in space exploration.

• NorthStar Earth and Space has raised $35 million to support development of a space situational awareness (SSA) constellation.

• Airbus Defence and Space is partnering with Voyager Space on its Starlab commercial space station.

• The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is working with a law firm on a regulatory "bootcamp" for space entrepreneurs.

• ISRO will work with Microsoft to support Indian space startups.

• General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems won a contract from Advanced Space to build a cislunar monitoring spacecraft.

• China's first Mars orbiter and rover appear to be in trouble.

• A startup is working to enable automatic networking in space using optical links.

• The one-time "SPAC king" that took Virgin Galactic public predicts that SpaceX will spin off Starlink as a public company this year.

• The U.S. Space Force is requesting information on laser communications systems to connect satellites in medium and high orbits.

• The FCC is one step closer to creating a Space Bureau.

• Russia will launch a Soyuz spacecraft without a crew to the International Space Station to replace a damaged Soyuz there.

• A retired general is the new CEO of space logistics company Skycorp.

• Capella Space announced it raised an additional $60 million to accelerate work on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites.

• The U.S. military will need to take advantage of commercial innovation in order to effectively compete with China in space.

• The United States and Japan agree that an attack in space would trigger a mutual defense treaty.

• The problems exposed in Russia's military during its invasion of Ukraine are a warning to the U.S. Space Force, its top general said.

• A Falcon Heavy launched the first U.S. Space Force mission of the year Sunday evening.

• The Space Force is considering on-ramps for emerging companies in its next national security launch contract.

• Stratospheric ballooning company World View is going public through a SPAC merger.

• The first Vulcan Centaur rocket is on its way to Cape Canaveral.

• The new Republican leadership of the House Appropriations Committee has announced the chairs of its various subcommittees.

• The head of military space acquisitions says his efforts to reform procurement are gaining traction.

• A NASA project designed to ultimately send scientists on private astronaut missions to the International Space Station is being scaled back.

• China is still waiting to hear back from its first Mars rover.

• HawkEye 360 will provide data collected by its radio-frequency mapping satellites for a Space Force threat-detection system.

• Buzz Aldrin celebrated his 93rd birthday Friday in style by getting married.

• NASA and DARPA will cooperate on a program to demonstrate a nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) system in space.

• Astrobotic has completed testing of its Peregrine lunar lander.

• A Colorado senator, meanwhile, is threatening to block Defense Department nominations until the Pentagon meets with him about Space Command's headquarters.

• The Commerce Department is planning to expand the space situational awareness services currently provided by the Defense Department.

• The two astronauts who flew the first commercial crew mission received medals at the White House Tuesday.

• The Space Force's Space Development Agency is planning a new procurement of 72 satellites.

• A startup is developing satellites that it claims could be used to disable other spacecraft.

• The Canadian Space Agency has started a public consultation on space regulatory reform.

• The Exploration Company, a European startup developing spacecraft to return cargo from space, raised $44 million this week.

• Pathfinder #31 with Jim Bridenstine - Payload

• ‘Wings like cracked eggshells’: Richard Branson faces turbulence over safety of space flights | Virgin Galactic | The Guardian

• Djiboutian Government signs MoU with HKATG to Build a USD 1 billion Spaceport in Djibouti - Space in Africa

• Why HBS Is Teaching MBAs about Space

• NASA and DARPA Partner on Nuclear Thermal Propulsion - Payload

• NASA Validates Revolutionary Propulsion Design for Deep Space Missions

• The Matthew Isakowitz, Patti Grace Smith, and Brooke Owens fellowships announced their 2023 cohorts.