Ursa Major earns more cash. Aerospace and defense startup Ursa Major Technologies raised a $600 million valuation in a new fundraising round, Bloomberg reports, the latest sign that investors are willing to back companies developing new rocket technology. Colorado-based Ursa Major closed its Series E fundraising round with investments from venture capital firms Eclipse, Woodline Partners, Principia Growth, Xen and Alsop Louie Partners. The company also secured $50 million in debt financing. Ursa Major is best known as a supplier of liquid-fueled rocket engines and solid rocket motors to power a range of commercial and government vehicles.
hypersonic tailwinds …Ursa Major says it is in a position to provide the U.S. industrial base with faster and more affordable propulsion systems than legacy contractors. “The company will rapidly introduce its throttleable, storable, liquid-fueled hypersonic and space-based defense solutions, while also expanding its solid rocket motor and sustained space mobility manufacturing capabilities,” Ursa Major said in a press release. Its customers include BAE Systems, which will use Ursa Major’s solid rocket motors to power tactical military-grade rockets, and Stratolaunch, which uses Ursa Major’s liquid-fueled Hadley engines for its hypersonic Talon-A spaceplane.
Rocket Lab celebrates two launches in 48 hours. Rocket Lab launched a payload for an unnamed commercial customer on Thursday, just hours after the company announced launch plans, Space News reports. The launch from Rocket Lab’s primary spaceport in New Zealand used the company’s Electron rocket, but officials released little information on the mission, other than its nickname: “Follow My Speed.” An artist’s illustration on the mission patch indicates that the payload could be the next in a series of Earth-imaging satellites from remote sensing company BlackSky, although the firm’s previous satellites have not been launched with such secrecy.
two hemispheres … Thursday’s launch from the Southern Hemisphere came just two days after Rocket Lab’s previous mission took off from Wallops Island, Virginia. That flight was a suborbital launch to support hypersonic technology demonstrations for the Defense Innovation Unit and Missile Defense Agency. All told, Rocket Lab has now launched 18 Electron rockets this year with 100 percent mission success, a company record.