#TAMPA, Fla. — Belgian camera maker Simera Sense has raised nearly $15 million to expand system assembly facilities out of South Africa and closer to its component producers in #Europe to develop higher-resolution #Cubesat products.

Simera Sense CEO and cofounder Johann du Toit said the company is also looking to establish a new facility this year, likely in Europe, to increase production capacity at least five times to meet growing demand from Earth observation satellite manufacturers.

“Our current production capacity is about 25 payloads plus additional 30-40 engineering and test models per year,” he told SpaceNews via email.

THE #WOODLANDS, Texas — #NASA says its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal is constrained by the second year of a debt-ceiling agreement that caps overall spending, leading to delays, potential cancellations and broader uncertainty for many NASA science programs in particular.

NASA released its fiscal year 2025 budget proposal March 11, requesting $25.384 billion, the exact amount it received in fiscal year 2023. It is a little more than half a billion dollars more than what the agency received in the final fiscal year 2024 spending bill enacted last week.

However, NASA had requested nearly $27.2 billion in its original fiscal year 2024 budget request a year ago. That request projected seeking $27.73 billion in 2025, so the new fiscal year 2025 proposal reflects a reduction of more than $2.3 billion from those earlier ambitions

#SANFRANCISCO – Phantom Space Corp. closed a bridge round to fund the Tucson, Arizona-based startup’s development and manufacturing of #satellites and launch vehicles.

#Phantom’s March 11 news release did not disclose the value of the latest round. To date, the company has raised about $37 million.

Phantom is developing Daytona, a launch vehicle for payloads with a maximum mass of 500 kilograms. In addition, Phantom plans to establish the Phantom Cloud small satellite constellation. Phantom Cloud is designed to provide #satellite data backhaul services, on-orbit cloud storage and edge computing.

#WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is requesting $144 million for the Office of Strategic Capital, created to help bring private investment to companies developing dual-use technologies with both commercial and national security applications.

In an investment strategy released March 8, the Pentagon identified space services, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity among its priorities for attracting private capital.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin launched the Office of Strategic Capital in December 2022. But the program thus far has been stuck in limbo due to a lack of congressional authorization to make loans and actual funding. The OSC wants to use financial tools like loan guarantees to spur #commercial investment.

#WASHINGTON — Earth imaging and analytics company #BlackSky won a $3.5 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to supply satellite imagery and analysis in support of “global moving target engagement,” the Air Force said March 8.

This award comes on the heels of a research contract last year, and a $2 million award announced March 4 to supply the Air Force #satellite imagery data and access to the BlackSky data analytics platform. Under the $2 million contract, the #AFRL will use the data for studies and to help train artificial intelligence models focused on detecting and tracking moving objects and targets from space.

#WASHINGTON — #Rocket propulsion startup Ursa Major announced March 9 its Hadley engine successfully flew for the first time powering a Stratolaunch #hypersonic test vehicle.

Stratolaunch operates a giant aircraft — a modified version of a double-fuselage Boeing 747-400 — that serves as a mobile launchpad. It carries hypersonic vehicles underneath its center wing until reaching the desired altitude. This allows hypersonic vehicles to reach higher speeds before ignition and avoids the complexities of ground launching

The March 9 test off the coast of California, over the Pacific Ocean, was the first powered flight of Stratolaunch’s Talon hypersonic test vehicle. The company said the vehicle reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.

#WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch conducted the first powered flight of its Talon vehicle March 9, reaching “high supersonic” speeds in the uncrewed test.

The Talon-A vehicle, designated TA-1, took off attached to the company’s Roc aircraft from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California at 10:17 a.m. Eastern according to flight tracking data. The plane flew west to a location in the Pacific off the central California coast, where it released TA-1 at an unspecified time. Roc returned to Mojave more than four hours after takeoff.

#Stratolaunch executives said in a call with reporters that they could not disclose the top speed or altitude of the TA-1 on its flight, citing “proprietary agreements” with unspecified customers. They were, though, satisfied with the flight.

#WASHINGTON — The first crewed flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has slipped from late April to early May because of International Space Station schedule conflicts and not due to any issues with the spacecraft itself.

In a media advisory released by #NASA late March 8, the agency said the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, previously scheduled to launch no earlier than April 22, was now scheduled for early March. The agency said the slip was “due to space station scheduling” but did not elaborate.

At recent briefings, #NASA managers said the key factor in the schedule for CFT was other missions to the station. “What we’ve been doing is watching how we progress with the Crew-8 launch and the CRS-30 mission,” said Steve Stich, NASA commercial crew program manager, in a briefing after the March 3 launch of SpaceX’s Crew-8 mission to the #ISS.

#WASHINGTON — Blue Origin expects to launch the first version of its Blue Moon lunar lander, a precursor to a future crewed lunar lander it is developing for #NASA, in 2025.

In an interview on the #CBS News program “60 Minutes” broadcast March 3, John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, said the company was planning to launch the first “Mark 1” version of its Blue Moon lander in as soon as a year.

“This lander, we’re expecting to land on the moon between 12 to 16 months from today,” he said, referring to a full-sized mockup of the lander behind him. “That is what our team is aiming towards.”

#TAMPA, Fla. — U.S.-based Slingshot Aerospace is opening offices in the United Kingdom to expand its space traffic coordination and analysis business globally.

Melissa Quinn, previously head of the company’s Seradata space data analysis team, will lead the new international business division out of the Space Systems Operations Facility at Spaceport Cornwall, in southwest England.

Quinn joined Slingshot in June after two and a half years as head of Spaceport Cornwall, a space business cluster that also provided the runway for Virgin Orbit’s failed launch from the U.K. in January 2023