01
Varda raises $251M Series D at a $1.6B valuation
SpaceX
Varda closed a $251 million Series D led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital at a $1.6 billion valuation, with Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, General Catalyst, 8090 Industries, Giant Step and Also Capital participating. The round takes Varda's total funding to roughly $600 million to scale its business of making pharmaceuticals in orbit.
02
Astranis lands $468M EXIM credit facility to scale MicroGEO production
The Export-Import Bank of the United States extended Astranis a $468 million credit facility, arranged by J.P. Morgan's Securitized Products Group, to fund domestic MicroGEO satellite production and global sovereign communications infrastructure. Astranis has five satellites in orbit, a backlog of more than $1 billion with customers including Gulf Space Technology, Chunghwa Telecom, MB Group, stc group and the U.S. government through the Resilient GPS program, and has raised over $1.2 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, Fidelity and Franklin Templeton.
03
Crew-13 is set to launch for the ISS with Watkins commanding Dragon Grace
SpaceX
NASA and SpaceX set Crew-13's launch on a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral for 11:10 a.m. EDT on October 1, with commander Jessica Watkins set to become the first NASA astronaut to fly twice on a Dragon, joined by pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov for a six-month expedition. Docking is scheduled about eight hours after launch, at about 7 p.m., the shortest transit planned for a Dragon, and the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 55% chance of acceptable weather.
04
Army awards Anduril, Castelion, Lockheed, RTX and Mach prototype deals for PrSM Increment 4
LMT
The Army selected Anduril, Castelion, Lockheed Martin, RTX and Mach Industries for Other Transaction Agreements to build prototypes of the Precision Strike Missile Increment 4, designed to hit moving maritime and land targets at ranges of at least 1,000 kilometers from HIMARS launchers with an open systems architecture. A competitive fly-off is set for fiscal 2027 with a first down select, followed by a final fly-off in fiscal 2028 and a final down select possible in fiscal 2030.
05
NASA books Modulate Space for $38M lunar 5G network and selects three Moon Base science payloads
NASA awarded Modulate Space Corporation a firm-fixed-price contract worth about $38 million to develop a 5G communications system with built-in Wi-Fi 6 for the lunar surface, split between a network-in-a-box lab demonstration through January 2028 and an integrated flight demonstration running to December 2028, managed from Glenn Research Center. Separately, NASA selected three PRISM science payloads for Moon Base, including the LEMS-SP environmental monitoring station, the GIMLI geophysical interior mapper and the DISCO depth imager, to fly on Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) deliveries.
06
Firefly signs Starcloud for lunar-orbit AI compute demo on Elytra
FLY
Firefly Aerospace signed Starcloud as a commercial customer, flying Starcloud's SC-1L AI compute payload aboard Firefly's Elytra orbital vehicle on its third lunar mission targeted no earlier than 2028. Elytra will first serve as the transfer vehicle and relay for a Blue Ghost lander to the Gruithuisen Domes under NASA's CLPS program, then remain in lunar orbit for five years hosting Starcloud's demonstration of a future lunar data center, with SC-1L ingesting data from Firefly's Solux vision system and transmitting processed results to Earth.
MTRNMaterion
GLWCorning
RDWRedwire Space
FJETStarfighters Space
SPIRSpire Global
ASTSAST SpaceMobile