space tourism
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Axiom Space raises $130 million for its commercial space station ambitions
One of the new space startups with the loftiest near-term goals has raised $130 million in a Series B round that demonstrates investor confidence in the scope of its ambitions: Axiom Space, which has been tapped by NASA to add privately developed space station modules to the ISS, announced the new funding led by C5 Capital.
This is the latest in a string of high-profile announcements for Axiom, which was founded in 2016 by a team including space professionals with a history of demonstrated expertise working on the International Space Station. Eventually, Axiom hopes to go from adding the first private commercial modules to the existing station, to creating their own, wholly private on-orbital platforms — for research, space tourism and more.
Axiom announced the people who will take part in its first-ever private astronaut launch to the ISS, which is set to fly next January using a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket. Axiom is the service provider for the mission, brokering the deal for the private spacefarers and setting up training and mission profile. That should be the first time we see a crew made up entirely of private individuals (i.e. not astronauts selected, trained and employed by their respective national government) make its way to the station.
The company was also in discussions with Tom Cruise about filming at least part of an upcoming film aboard the ISS, and it’s in development with a production company on a forthcoming competition reality show that will see contestants vie for a spot on a private flight to the station.
Axiom is emerging as the leading linkage between private human spaceflight and the existing infrastructure and industry, covering both public sector partners like NASA, and the “rails” of the bourgeoning industry — SpaceX and its ilk. It’s been focused on this unique opportunity longer than most in the private market, and it has all the relationships and in-house expertise to make it work.
This new, significant injection of capital will help the company hire, as well as boost its ability to construct the pieces of its forthcoming private space station modules, as well as its eventual station itself. The Houston-based company aims to put its ISS modules on the station by 2024, and it has raised $150 million to date.
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Rocket Lab will try to recover the booster of its Electron rocket for the first time on its next launch
Rocket Lab is set to complete a crucial test for its rocket reusability program during its next mission, which is currently set to take place sometime in mid-November, with a launch widow that opens on November 16. This is a bit of a surprise, because the launch company said that it would be doing this on its 17th flight, and the next launch is actually its 16th, but the company had a succinct answer for why it moved up the timetable.
I know we said flight 17 for recovery but… pic.twitter.com/N3HDdCwPFD
— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) November 5, 2020
This isn’t the first test Rocket Lab has performed in pursuit of reusability — after announcing in August 2019 its intent to recover and refly the Electron booster, something Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck originally said wasn’t in the cards for the company, Rocket Lab has tested reentry guidance and control systems, as well as the parachute to be used to slow the booster’s descent once it’s back in Earth’s atmosphere.
In a video released today, Beck explained the reasoning behind even attempting to recover the boosters (essentially to increase the company’s rate of production by eliminating the need to build a new booster for every flight) and also the reasons why it wasn’t in the original plan (the Electron is too small to allow for an engine-powered boost back like the ones Falcon 9 and Blue Origin’s New Shepard uses).
But Beck and team realized they could use an unconventional approach that involves flipping the rocket around and angling it such that it survives reentry, paired with a drogue parachute deployment and primary parachute combo that slows it enough that a helicopter can catch it midair as it drifts. This recovery attempt won’t include that midflight snag, but will instead hopefully see the booster land itself gently enough on the ocean’s surface, slowed by the chute, allowing a recovery team to pick it up.
Beck says that the helicopter catch part is actually not his biggest concern, since the company has previously demonstrated that part of its approach works in practice. Instead, it’s ensuring that they’re just able to actually get the stage after it deploys its orbital cargo to begin with.
If Rocket Lab can recover this first stage, that will put it well-within striking distance of putting an operational recovery system in place, hopefully leading to less time between launches and potentially lower operational costs down the line.
No matter how the launch works out, we’ll get the chance to go over the attempt and next steps with Beck at our inaugural TC Sessions: Space event in December, where he’s joining us on our virtual stage for a fireside chat.
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Luna is a new kind of space company helping biotech find its footing in microgravity
Toronto-based startup Luna Design and Innovation is a prime example of the kind of space company that is increasingly starting up to take advantage of the changing economics of the larger industry. Founded by Andrea Yip, who is also Luna’s CEO, the bootstrapped venture is looking to blaze a trail for biotechnology companies who stand to gain a lot from the new opportunities in commercial space – even if they don’t know it yet.
“I’ve spent my entire career in the public and private health industry, doing a lot of product and service design and innovation,” Yip told me in an interview. “I was working in pharma[ceuticals] for several years, but at the end of 2017, I decided to leave the pharma world and I really wanted to find a way to work along the intersection of pharma, space and design, because I just believe that the future of health for humanity is in space.”
Yip founded Luna at the beginning of this year to help turn that belief into action, with a focus on highlighting the opportunities available to the biotechnology sector in making use of the research environment unique to space.
“We see space as a research platform, and we believe that it’s a research platform that can be leveraged in order to solve healthcare problems here on Earth,” Yip explained. “So for me, it was critically important to open up space to the biotech sector, and to the pharma sector, in order to use it as a research platform for R&D and novel discovery.”
The International Space Station has hosted a number of pharma and biotech experiments.
NASA’s work in space has led to a number of medical advances, inducing digital imaging tech used in breast biopsy, transmitters used for monitoring fetus development within the womb, LED’s used in brain cancer surgery and more. Work done on researching and developing pharmaceuticals in space is also something that companies including Merck, Proctor & Gamble and other industry heavyweights have been dabbling in for years, with experiments conducted on the International Space Station. Companies like SpaceFarma have now sent entire minilaboratories to the ISS to conduct research on behalf of clients. But it’s still a business with plenty of remaining under-utilized opportunity, according to Yip – and tons of potential.
“I think it’s a highly underutilized research platform, unfortunately, right now,” she said. “When it comes to certain physical and life sciences phenomena, we know that things behave differently in space, in what we refer to as microgravity-based environments […] We know that cancer cells, for instance, behave differently in short- and longer-term microgravity when it comes to the way that they metastasize. So being able to even acknowledge that type of insight, and try and understand ‘why’ can unlock a lot of new discovery and understanding about the way cancer actually functions […] and that can actually help us better design drugs, and treatment opportunities here on Earth, just based on those insights.”
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Credit: Blue Origin .
Yip says that while there has been some activity already in biotech and microgravity, “we’re on the early end of this innovation,” and goes on to suggest that over the course of the next ten or so years, the companies that will be disrupting the existing class of legacy big pharma players will be ones who’ve invested early and deeply in space-based research and development.
The role of Luna is to help biotech companies figure out how best to approach building out an investment in space-based research. To that end, one of its early accomplishments is securing a role as a ‘Channel Partner’ for Jeff Bezos’ commercial space launch company Blue Origin. This arrangement means that Luna acts a a sales partner for Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket, working with potential clients for the Amazon founder’s rocket company on how and why they might seek to set up a sub-orbital space-based experiment.
That’s the near-term vision, and the way that Luna will seek to have the most impact here on Earth. But the possibilities of what the future holds for the biotech sector start to really open up once you consider the current trajectory of the space industry, including NASA’s next steps, and efforts by private companies like SpaceX to expand human presence to other planet.
“We’re talking about going back to the Moon by 2024,” Yip says, referring to NASA’s goal with its Artemis program. “We’re talking about going to Mars in the next few years. There’s a lot that we will need to uncover and discover for ourselves, and I think that’s a huge opportunity. Who knows what we’ll discover when we’re on other planets, and we’re actually putting people there? We have to start preparing for that and building capability for that.”
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NASA taps SpaceX, Blue Origin and 11 more companies for Moon and Mars space tech
NASA has selected 13 companies to partner with on 19 new specific technology projects it’s undertaking to help reach the Moon and Mars. These include SpaceX, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, among others, with projects ranging from improving spacecraft operation in high temperatures to landing rockets vertically on the Moon.
Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin will work with NASA on developing a navigation system for “safe and precise landing at a range of locations on the Moon” in one undertaking, and also on readying a fuel cell-based power system for its Blue Moon lander, revealed earlier this year. The final design spec will provide a power source that can last through the lunar night, or up to two weeks without sunlight in some locations. It’ll also be working on further developing engine nozzles for rockets with liquid propellant that would be well-suited for lunar lander vehicles.
SpaceX will be working on technology that will help move rocket propellant around safely from vehicle to vehicle in orbit, a necessary step to building out its Starship reusable rocket and spacecraft system. The Elon Musk-led private space company will also be working with Kennedy Space Center on refining its vertical landing capabilities to adapt it to work with large rockets on the Moon, where lunar regolith (aka Moon dust) and the low-gravity, zero atmosphere environment can complicate the effects of controlled descents.
Lockheed Martin will be working on using solid-state processing to create metal powder-based materials that can help spacecraft deal better with operating in high-temperature environments, and on autonomous methods for growing and harvesting plants in space, which could be crucial in the case of future long-term colonization efforts.
Other projects will tap Advanced Space, Vulcan Wireless, Aerogel Technologies, Spirit AeroSystem, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Anasphere, Bally Ribbon Mills, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Colorado Power Electronics and Maxar; you can read about each in detail here.
NASA’s goals with these private partnerships are to both develop at speed, and decrease the cost of efforts to operate crewed space exploration, as part of its Artemis program and beyond.
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Is space truly within reach for startups and VC?
Elon Musk’s SpaceX managed to pull off something very few people thought it could — by disrupting one of the most fixed markets in the world with some of the most entrenched and protected players ever to benefit from government contract arrangements: rocket launches. The success of SpaceX, and promising progress from other new launch providers, including Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, have encouraged interest in space-based innovation among entrepreneurs and investors alike. But is this a true boom, or just a blip?
There’s an argument for both at once, with one type of space startup rapidly descending to Earth in terms of commercialization timelines and potential upside, and the other remaining a difficult bet to make unless you’re comfortable with long timelines before any liquidity event and a lot of upfront investment.
Cheaper, faster, lighter, better
Image via Getty Images / Andrey Suslov
There’s no question that one broad category of technology at least is a lot more addressable by early-stage companies (and by extension, traditional VC investment). The word “satellite” once described almost exclusively gigantic, extremely expensive hunks of sophisticated hardware, wherein each component would eat up the monthly burn rate of your average early-stage consumer tech venture.
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Watch Blue Origin’s most critical rocket launch right here
The launch is scheduled for 11:00 am EDT on July 18, 2018.
Blue Origin is about to perform a critical rocket test. For the first time, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company will send its New Shepard rocket to its red line at the edge of space and then fire the escape motor on the capsule that will carry passengers. If this test goes well, Blue Origin’s New Shepard program could become operational as early as this year.
This is the ninth mission for the New Shepard program and the third time this reusable rocket was used.
About 20 seconds (and 100 feet) after the New Shepard booster and the crew capsule separates, the motor on the capsule will fire with 70K foot pounds of thrust, sending the capsule 50,000 km higher than it has gone before. After the motor fires, parachutes will hopefully deploy, allowing the capsule to return safely to solid ground. Separately, the booster will hopefully return to Earth and land so it can be reused again.
Inside the capsule is a crash dummy loaded with instruments to measure the forces of the rocket launch. Bezos dubbed the dummy “Mannequin Skywalker” because even the richest man in modern history is a nerd. Mannequin Skywalker will experience around 3Gs during the launch, a Blue Origin representative said.
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Watch Elon Musk’s keynote where he announced SpaceX’s new rocket and Mars colonization
Elon Musk gave a keynote address yesterday to the International Aeronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia. During the 43 minute talk, which is embedded above, Musk laid out SpaceX’s future including colonizing Mars and building one rocket to rule them all. The talk is fantastic. Elon was Elon and revealed countless details about future SpaceX plans. This is why he’s celebrated… Read More
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Jeff Bezos took to Twitter for the first time to announce a milestone from his space company Blue Origin, and the Internet soaked it in.