Big bucks (8/22/23)

Good morning. We’ve got some exciting news for you: Payload will be hosting a summit for space industry leaders and top investors in LA this November! You won’t want to miss this one. Read on for more details about the event and for the application to attend.

Today’s newsletter:
💰 Axiom’s $350M Series C
🛰️ SDA awards Tranche 2 contracts
🎙️ Pathfinder #0060
🔁 On the move

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Axiom Nabs $350M Series C

Axiom Space raised a $350M Series C round to support growth, the company announced yesterday. The round takes Axiom's total funding to more than $505M, the company said in a release, establishing it as the second most well-capitalized space startup after SpaceX.

“We are building on the legacy of the International Space Station, leveraging the pillars that were constructed in low-Earth orbit more than two decades ago, to now support a burgeoning global space economy,” Axiom chief executive Michael Suffredini said.

Axiom’s business model: The human spaceflight company has three distinct lines of business:

1. Coordinating government and private tourism trips to the ISS, in partnership with SpaceX and NASA.

2. Supplying lunar xEVAS (Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services) spacesuits for NASA.

3. Building a commercial space station that will append to the ISS starting in 2026 and eventually break off into its own independent habitat.

The company has secured over $2.2B in customer contracts.

International funding: The round was led by Saudi investment firm Aljazira Capital and Korean healthcare investors Boryung. Boryung has anchored multiple Axiom rounds, viewing its commercial space station as an opportunity to support the development of next-gen healthcare technologies.

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SDA Awards Northrop and Lockheed $1.5B

The Space Development Agency (SDA) is going full steam ahead on its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Yesterday, the agency announced that it has awarded the first two contracts to build and operate spacecraft for the second tranche of the network.

The two contracts are worth a combined $1.5B and secure 72 satellites. The birds will support encrypted communication for Tranche 2 of the Transport Layer of the planned national defense architecture (more on all that later). The awardees:

• Northrop Grumman ($NOC) won $733M for 36 satellites

• Lockheed Martin ($LMT) won $816M for 36 satellites

Transport and tracking: The SDA’s ambitious plans for a national defense architecture in space focus on taking full advantage of emerging technologies whenever they’re ready. A batch of satellites, or “tranche,” is planned to launch approximately every two years.

The architecture also breaks down into two individual constellations, Transport and Tracking. These contracts cover satellites that will be part of the Transport Layer, which will be connected in a mesh network via laser inter-satellite links to ferry information wherever it needs to go as quickly as possible.

Peeking ahead: Tranche 2 is expected to launch in 2026 and provide global persistence for Tranche 1 capabilities. Northrop and Lockheed, along with York Space Systems, are also in the process of building satellites for Tranche 1, which is slated for launch next year.

The evolution of XPRIZE and Pathfinder #0060 with Anousheh Ansari

This week’s Pathfinder podcast features the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, Anousheh Ansari—our first guest who’s actually been to space (it’s shocking to us, too, that it’s taken this long).

After immigrating to the United States from Iran as a teenager, Anousheh co-founded Telecom Technologies, a telecommunication company that integrated voice and data. In 2006, she became the first privately-funded woman and Iranian-American to travel to space and the ISS.

XPRIZE catch-up: The XPRIZE Foundation’s vision, inspired by the spirit of the early 20th-century aviation prizes, has always been to harness the power of competition to address global challenges.

The Ansari family’s $10M purse set forth a competition to stimulate innovation in spaceflight, challenging private entities to design a reusable crewed spacecraft within a two-week period. In 2004, the Mojave Aerospace Ventures team's SpaceShipOne clinched the prize, catalyzing a paradigm shift in the realm of commercial spaceflight. Virgin Galactic eventually licensed the technology for its SpaceShipTwo vehicle.

The latest challenge? $10M for wildfire detection and suppression, which features two tracks: autonomous wildfire response and space-based wildfire detection and intelligence. In the space track, teams will have one minute to accurately detect all fires across a landscape larger than entire states or countries, and 10 minutes to precisely characterize and report data with the fewest false positives to two ground stations.

A sneak peek…

In addition to Anousheh’s background, we discuss:

• The origins of the XPRIZE Foundation

• How to focus on the right global challenge

• The future of commercial spaceflight

• Structuring the incentives to promote innovation

• XPRIZE Wildfire

• And much more…

Pathfinder #0060 is live now…

…check it out on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or desktop.

Join Us In LA!

Payload is excited to announce our inaugural Space Investor Summit to be held this fall in Los Angeles, CA. The summit will bring together a select group of leading institutional investors, policy-makers, and space industry executives from around the world to network, discuss market trends, explore tangible investment opportunities, and offer a forum to engage in constructive, future-forward dialogue.

We’ll be announcing our incredible lineup of speakers soon!

To apply, follow the prompts here.

In Other News

• China’s high-orbit SAR satellite has entered its operational orbit.

• Luna-25 failed because it fired its engine for too long in a burn that lasted 127 seconds instead of the planned 84.

• SpaceX launched its first Starlink batch of the day from Vandenberg early this morning.

• Chandrayaan-3 made contact with the Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter ahead of its planned landing tomorrow.

• The New Yorker published a piece about Elon Musk’s “soft power” in the US government.

• Ars Technica interviewed Astra’s Chris Kemp to discuss the future of the business.

• Korea is getting in on the lunar party, announcing plans to land a probe on the Moon by 2032.

The View from Space