Satellite Manufacturing
Open Cosmos Raises €300 Million to Scale European Satellite Manufacturing
Open Cosmos just closed a €300 million Series C, and roughly €0 of the press language around it mentions that the company is now trying to run four satellite factories in four countries at the same time while also promising to turn raw orbital imagery into usable intelligence in 30 minutes instead of two days.
TrustPoint's Production Run Is the Real Test of Its PNT System
TrustPoint has ordered 40 satellites from EnduroSat US for a GPS-independent positioning, navigation and timing constellation. The order will be delivered in three tranches, with the first launches expected no earlier than 2027. That is a decisive change in the company’s task: TrustPoint has shown that its C-band payload can fly, and now has to show that the system can be produced, integrated and operated at a scale that begins to resemble infrastructure. EnduroSat’s announcement of the 40-satellite contract is clear about that transition.
When Deeptech's Biggest Rounds Start Looking Like Infrastructure Deals
Three deeptech companies closed nine-figure-plus rounds in the same few weeks this August, and the striking thing isn’t the size of any single check. It’s who’s writing them and how the money is structured. A UK sovereign fund and Arm backed a semiconductor startup’s chip architecture bet. A revolving credit facility, not just equity, is funding a missile-manufacturing campus. Google and Toyota’s venture arm are betting directly on satellite production capacity, not just the data those satellites collect. None of this looks like the venture capital playbook from ten years ago. It looks a lot more like project finance.
Space's Next Edge Isn't the Boldest Mission. It's the One You Can Repeat.
York Space Systems just told the market what a “good enough” satellite for very low Earth orbit actually looks like, and it isn’t the exotic engineering flex that the term VLEO usually implies. The company’s new LX/V-Class platform, derived from its existing S- and LX-Class spacecraft, adds structural changes for reduced drag, targets missions of more than three years, and can operate as low as 200 kilometers. It carries a higher-thrust electric propulsion system from Orbion Space Technology, around 300 kilograms of payload capacity, 2 kilowatts of peak power, and according to York, it can go from signed contract to launch in six to seven months.