Private equity firm Affiliates of Antarctica Capital has acquired a controlling interest in geospatial intelligence company Descartes Labs.  The deal was announced on August 4, and financial terms were not disclosed. The press release did not include many details about the deal but said that Antarctica operating partners Richard Davis will serve as CEO and…

Virginia-based geospatial intelligence and satellite imagery provider BlackSky Technology secured reseller rights to 23 different tasking and archive imagery products owned by Airbus under the terms of a new partnership contract both companies signed and announced on Wednesday. The deal gives BlackSky access to Airbus' high-resolution optical imagery from Pléiades Neo (30 cm) and Pléiades…

ESA and the European Commission confirmed Wednesday that they have lost the Copernicus Sentinel-1B Earth observation satellite after it experienced a power supply failure in December that left it unable to transmit radar data. ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programs, Simonetta Cheli said the agency's Anomaly Review Board determined that it was impossible to recover…

Ball Aerospace secured two contracts with NASA to support the NOAA's next-generation geostationary weather satellite constellation under the Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) program. The space systems manufacturer said on Monday that the contracts require the company to conduct two 20-month studies that will measure Atmospheric Composition (ACX) and Ocean Color (OCX) for GeoXO. This is…