Astroscale successfully demonstrated its ability to capture spacecraft during a key demonstration of its End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration (ELSA-d) satellite on Wednesday. The long-awaited magnetic capture test represents a significant step forward for the Japanese space company, which is looking to sign up government and private industry customers for its space debris removal service. Since…

A decade ago, commercial IT underwent a widespread shift under the theme of convergence — of hardware and software, networks, cloud, and more. Today those efforts underpin modern government IT operations, but the concept of convergence is re-emerging as digital transformation demands closer alignment of technologies, applications, and collaboration to achieve advanced functionality. This is…

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has selected a crop of space startups for a new program called the AWS Space Accelerator, in collaboration with space investor firm Seraphim. The companies selected span a broad range of space capabilities: Cognitive Space, D-Orbit, Descartes Labs, Edgybees, Hawkeye 360, LeoLabs, Lunar Outpost, Orbital Sidekick, Satellite VU, and Ursa Space. …

CesiumAstro has announced plans for its first launch, Cesium Mission-1, consisting of two cubesats, in September of this year. CesiumAstro builds phased array communication payloads for airborne and in-orbit platforms.  The company said in a May 25 announcement that this first launch will serve as an on-orbit testbed for customers to run experiments on its…