Commercial
Commercial spaceflight news from Cosmic Herald — SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, private space stations, and the new space economy.
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Commercial
Astroscale Raises New Capital as Orbital Debris Removal Becomes Big Business
Japanese-founded Astroscale secures fresh funding to scale its debris removal operations, riding a wave of commercial space investment that signals the orbital sustainability market is finally maturing.
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Commercial
AST SpaceMobile's Block 2 BlueBirds Are in Orbit — and the Race for Direct-to-Cell Just Got Real
SpaceX lofted three Block 2 BlueBird satellites for AST SpaceMobile, expanding a constellation built on the audacious premise that your existing phone can talk directly to orbit.
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Commercial
ElevationSpace Banks $40 Million to Chase the Factory-in-Orbit Dream
Japanese startup ElevationSpace closed a $40M Series B, pushing total funding to $63.5M as it builds a reentry-capable platform for manufacturing and research in microgravity.
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Commercial
EQT to Acquire Exolaunch as Space-Industry Consolidation Picks Up Speed
Swedish investment firm EQT is snapping up rideshare specialist Exolaunch, the latest in a string of acquisitions reshaping the commercial space services landscape.
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Commercial
An Austrian Propulsion Startup Just Landed €6.3 Million From Europe's Sovereign Space Push
Gate Space, a Vienna-born satellite propulsion firm, secured €6.3M from the European Innovation Council — the only space company in a 38-firm cohort — as Europe doubles down on homegrown launch and in-orbit capabilities.
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Commercial
MDA Space Moves to Acquire Blue Canyon Technologies, Planting a Flag in the U.S. Smallsat Market
Canadian space firm MDA Space is buying Blue Canyon Technologies, securing a direct foothold in the booming U.S. small satellite bus and components market amid a wave of industry consolidation.
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Commercial
A Falcon 50 and a Big Bet: Mu-g Technologies Wants to Fill the Gap in Commercial Parabolic Flight
With Zero-G Corp grounded and NASA buying its own 737, a self-funded startup armed with a Dassault Falcon 50 is stepping into the commercial parabolic flight market to serve researchers left without a ride.
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Commercial
China's Spark Space Bets on Electric-Pump Engines to Carve Out a Niche in the Small-Sat Launch Race
Two-year-old Hefei startup Spark Space has test-fired its Lieyan-2 kerosene-LOX engine and closed back-to-back funding rounds totaling over $14.8M, racing to debut its Jinhua-1 rocket by 2027.
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Commercial
SpaceX Flies Its First Falcon 9 as a Public Company. Almost Nothing Changed.
Two days after a record-setting Nasdaq debut that valued it near $2.1 trillion, SpaceX launched Starlink 17-54 from Vandenberg — its first Falcon 9 as a publicly traded company, and a routine flight that says a lot about why the IPO happened.
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Commercial
Ariane 6 Just Lifted the Heaviest Payload in European Launch History. It Was Full of Amazon Satellites.
On June 17, an Ariane 64 rocket lifted 36 Amazon Leo broadband satellites to orbit — the heaviest payload ever lofted by an Ariane rocket, and the debut of upgraded P160C solid boosters that give the vehicle a 10% thrust increase. Europe's commercial heavy lifter is finding its stride.
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Commercial
Relativity Space Wants to Build a Mars Orbiter — And It's Not Waiting for NASA to Ask
Relativity Space announces plans to privately develop a Mars orbiter, signaling that commercial ambitions in deep space are no longer theoretical.
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Commercial
The Upper Stage Problem: Why Reusable Second Stages Are Harder Than They Look
Recovering and reusing first stages was the revolution. But upper stages — which must survive orbital velocities and reentry — are a fundamentally harder problem, and the industry's three main bets are taking very different approaches.
