Discover the cutting-edge launch systems, orbital infrastructure, and commercial space innovations expanding humanity's footprint and building the new space economy.
Sceye's ST1 airship flew 15,000 km from New Mexico to Japan in 13 days, then handed live mobile broadband to ordinary phones through SoftBank's core network. It marks the shift from experiment to network infrastructure, and raises the question of who certifies it.
NASA handed Blue Origin a $700 million fixed-price contract to build Mars its first dedicated relay network. The award turns deep-space communications from a government-owned asset into a purchased service.
More than 37,000 satellites are forecast to launch by 2033, and the factories to build them are now the orbital economy's binding constraint. Vertical integration is winning the funding rounds; open-market makers are retreating to the one-offs.
Space domain awareness is becoming the traffic control layer of the commercial orbit economy. Inside the 2026 funding wave, the shift to AI threat detection, and who owns the catalog.
Pixxel closed a $100 million Series C, the largest Indian space-tech raise, co-led by Temasek and Seraphim. The bet: Earth observation stops being a data product and becomes planetary infrastructure.
Outlier Space, Varda and Space Forge are building the return-trip layer of the space economy. The ISS subsidy is ending, and pharmaceutical companies are the first customers willing to pay for it.
K2 Space closed a $500M Series D at a $6.8B valuation, powered by the most powerful electric thruster ever flown. The next test is whether it can build 100 large satellites a year.
The first commercial spacecraft to rendezvous with an asteroid launches in Q4 2026. Built for under $5 million, with a failed mission behind it, it carries $2.1 billion of the sector’s hopes.