Payload 3/8/22 Newsletter

Good morning, and happy International Women's Day. 

Notice something different this morning? We’ve switched email systems—read on for what it means for you. In today's edition: ❌ Space SPAC terminated 📝 LV0008 postmortem📧 Payload & beehiiv🔃 On the move

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The Latest Sign of a Struggling SPAC Market

Pine Technology Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ:PTOC) and Tomorrow.io (née ClimaCell) have called off their SPAC merger, the two said yesterday. $PTOC closed the day down ~1.4%. 

Announced Dec. 7, the transaction was expected to give the weather forecasting company (and nascent constellation developer) a $1.2B post-deal valuation, while providing Tomorrow.io with up to $420M in gross proceeds. 

• Tomorrow.io planned to use the windfall from going public to finance the production of a 32-smallsat constellation. These satellites will be fitted with proprietary storm-tracking radars, to boost weather forecasting capabilities.  

• The startup counts Uber, Ford, Delta, and JetBlue as customers, among other companies (and government users).

PTOC’s POV: The SPAC cited “market conditions” for agreeing to terminate the merger. It’s back on the hunt for another target, and has until March 15, 2023 to complete a merger.

Tomorrow’s take: “Our mission does not change and neither do our growth plans,” CMO Dan Slagen told Payload via email. “Our constellation marches forward as planned.” 

• While Pine Technology was and is a “tremendous partner,” Tomorrow.io CEO Shimon Elkabetz wrote in a LinkedIn note, it ultimately became clear in recent months “that the best choice for the company and its expansive growth is to remain private for now.”

• “Our duty is to ensure we choose the best way to operate towards our mission given changing macroeconomic conditions,” Elkabetz noted. The company will revisit public market options down the road. 

The upshot: As we’ve written ad nauseum, SPACs have had a tough go in recent months. This called-off deal, along with a biopharma merger also canceled yesterday, represent the 9th and 10th canceled SPACs in 2022. On average, a SPAC has been called off every 6.6 days so far this year.

While industry watchers have said they expected a slowdown in space SPACs, most didn’t expect the spigot to shut off. We’ll be keeping close tabs on other announced mergers to see if deal-making completely drops off, especially in light of new geopolitical flux. 

Click here to read this story on our website or share it online.

Astra Postmortem

A month after Astra’s LV0008 mission failed, the launcher has issued a preliminary postmortem of what went wrong.

ICYMI: Astra (NASDAQ:ASTR) attempted its first launch from the Space Coast on Feb. 10. After a few delays, the rocket launched and eventually failed mid-flight.

The problem: In a statement issued Monday morning by Andrew Griggs, Astra’s senior director of mission management and assurance, the company pinned the launch failure on an electrical issue that prevented the payload fairing from fully separating from the upper stage. The fairing’s five separation mechanisms fired in the wrong order, the fifth mechanism never released, and four NASA payloads were lost for good.

• The root of the issue: two “harness channels” were swapped in the fairing design drawings, and the fairing was built and tested according to those designs.

• The upper stage went tumbling afterwards due to a software issue, the company said. Now, they’re confident it’s been debugged.

The fix: Astra has gone back and reordered the separation mechanisms in its existing fairings and added more robust tests to catch similar mistakes on future launches. “With the root causes identified and corrective measures in place, we’re preparing to return to the launch pad with LV0009 soon,” the company said.

Click here to read this story on our website or share it online.

Payload's New Partner

We’re excited to announce that we’ve migrated our email tech stack to beehiiv. In the interests of transparency, we wanted to peel back the curtain and explain why we've made the change. 

1) More functionality: Among other things, beehiiv will enable us to launch a referral system. Soon, each of you will have a personalized referral hub with a tiered award system. When you hit certain referral thresholds, you’ll be able to receive exclusive content and earn Payload swag. 

2) Deliverability: We had email deliverability issues with our previous stack, which consisted of a few third-party tools cobbled together. beehiiv has vetted our email list for email addresses that are likely to bounce. Long story short, this will help ensure Payload isn’t marked as spam in your inbox or struck down by email filtering algorithms. 

3) A great team: Ryan, our managing editor, worked in a past life with beehiiv’s cofounders at Morning Brew. Trust us, this team knows email. 

That’s it for now. More exciting announcements to come. In the meantime, if you have any feedback—good or bad—hit reply and let us know.

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In Other News

• Bahrain became the 17th country to sign the Artemis Accords.

• ESA’s Solar Orbiter is halfway between the Earth and the sun. Mark your calendars—the European spacecraft is set to make its close first pass of the sun on March 26. 

• Iran says it has successfully launched Noor-2, a second military satellite.

• Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin and retired astronaut Scott Kelly traded sharply worded barbs on Twitter. 

• HawkEye 360 detected GPS interference in/near Ukraine over the course of four months, SpaceNews reports. 

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