Space and time (3/17/23)

Good morning. Welcome to the 203 followers who joined Payload nation this week. And happy St. Patrick's Day to all.

Today’s newsletter: ⌛ Astra extension🔗 Rivada x Aalyria📖 Weekend reads

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Astra Requests an Extension

Gravity may be a tough opponent, but it's got nothing on the unrelenting forces of public markets.

On Thursday, launch startup Astra ($ASTR) announced that it has requested additional time from Nasdaq to boost its share price and avoid a delisting.

Astra’s road: Over the last couple of years, the Alameda, CA company has struggled to consistently reach orbit with its small launcher vehicle. After a mission for NASA failed last summer, Astra scrapped all its remaining flights for 2022, retired its 3.3 vehicle, and announced an accelerated development timeline for the larger Rocket 4.0.

• The public markets responded unfavorably, sending $ASTR down from a peak of $21.25 during the frothy height of the 2021 SPAC boom to just $0.42 as of this writing. That’s a 98% peak-to-trough decline, for those keeping track at home.

• On October 6, NASDAQ sent Astra a letter warning the company that it needed to bring the stock price over $1.00 or risk getting booted from the exchange.

Yesterday’s extension request, if granted, would give Astra 180 more days to boost its stock price. The company plans to clear $1 either organically through performance improvement or artificially with a reverse stock split.

"Based on our discussions with representatives of Nasdaq, we expect to hear back from Nasdaq regarding the status of our application on or around April 5, 2023, and we are not aware of any reason why our application would not be approved," Astra CFO Axel Martinez said.

Bumpy week for launch companies: The Astra request comes just days after CNBC reported that Virgin Orbit, another public rocket company, was halting operations and temporarily furloughing nearly all of its employees and as it has similarly struggled to send its rockets to orbit.

The upshot: Astra and Virgin Orbit are deeply unprofitable, cash-burning machines in a public market that has lost patience for long-horizon businesses. With higher interest rates making it difficult to access additional capital, the two rocket companies face a steep climb to survive as publicly traded companies.

What to watch for: Astra will report Q4 at the end of the month. As for Virgin Orbit, expect to see some sort of update on the company’s future in the coming weeks.

Across Space and Time

Earlier this week, Rivada Space Networks announced that Aalyria will help manage and optimize communications across its planned LEO constellation. Aalyria emerged out of stealth late last year with a trove of valuable IP it acquired from Google parent Alphabet.

Rivada 101

Last year, Rivada announced itself to the world with a splashy plan to build a networked 600-satellite constellation for enterprise and government users. The constellation will be connected via laser links and carry onboard data routers.

• Its greatest asset: spectrum rights to a high-priority, 4,000 MHz region of Ka-band acquired from Liechtenstein company Trion Space.

• Its greatest challenge: a race against the clock, as these spectrum rights granted by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) are set to expire in mid-2026 if half of the planned constellation doesn’t get to orbit.

Rivada’s spectrum rights, secured in 2014, have a higher-priority designation than the broadband megaconstellations taking over LEO (Starlink, and eventually, Kuiper). If ever a conflict arises in determining who gets to send its data first, Rivada’s rights win out, ensuring its services remain efficient and resilient as competition and congestion grow.

With the 2026 deployment deadline fast approaching, Rivada has its head down on nailing down the pieces it needs to get its constellation built. The company has secured financing and 12 SpaceX launches to get the birds up. Recently, Rivada awarded Terran Orbital ($LLAP) a $2.4B contract to manufacture the first 300 satellites.

Back to Aalyria

The Alphabet brainchild says that it’s built a system that can efficiently chart a path for data to travel across a constellation at scale. Aalyria has two core products:

1. Spacetime, a smart software system for orchestrating networks of ground stations, aircraft, satellites, vessels, and urban meshes.

2. Tightbeam, an advanced laser communication terminal for ground-to-space, terrestrial, and airborne applications.

“We built Spacetime to dynamically route communications across anything that flies or moves, on Earth or in space, to expand connectivity to people, places and things that were previously thought unconnectable,” Aalyria CEO Chris Taylor said in a statement.

Under this agreement, Rivada will use Spacetime in its constellation to keep data moving as quickly as possible across the mesh network.

+ For more on Aalyria, check out Pathfinder #0018 with CTO Brian Barritt.

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In Other News

• Rocket Lab ($RKLB) launched two Capella satellites from Wallops yesterday, marking its 34th successful mission and second from US soil.

• OneWeb, which is one launch away from full deployment of its V1 constellation, has effectively written off the 36 satellites stranded in Kazakhstan.

• SpaceX completed its 27th supply run to the ISS, with its Cargo Dragon docking with the Harmony module at 7:31am EDT yesterday. The ship is expected to undock and bring supplies back to Earth in a month.

• Egypt launched its second remote sensing satellite, Horus 2, from China.

• And while we’re here, a Long March 11 launched and deployed a classified satellite into a near-polar orbit.

• Gravitics conducted a successful pressure test of its StarMax space station module, reaching over 26.4 PSI.

• India scheduled the first Gaganyaan abort missions for May.

The View from USPS