House SPAC Index – Terran Orbital Sells Shares, Replaces CFO

Welcome to S-SPACⁱ!  On this version, Terran Orbital shares sank after the corporate offered shares and changed its CFO, Rocket Lab’s booster and inventory each fell to Earth, AST SpaceMobile made a cosmic telephone name, Spire World gained two contracts, prospects for Virgin Galactic subsequent flight revealed themselves, Satellogic and Skyloom introduced a laser communications partnership, Momentus signed a contract to ship a payload in orbit, and Planet Labs’ CEO acquired an enormous chunk of shares as a joint satellite tv for pc challenge with NASA superior.

Terran Orbital sells shares, appoints new CFO

Terran Orbital (NYSE: LLAP) shares fell 19.7 % to $1.14 on Monday (September 18) after the corporate announced it was promoting 23.2 million shares of frequent inventory. The corporate expects to lift $32.5 million earlier than charges and bills are deducted to pay for company bills.

The announcement got here three days after the corporate revealed that Chief Monetary Officer Gary Hobart would transition to a newly created senior government place of Chief Transformation Officer (CTO). Terran Orbital appointed Mathieu Riffel, 38, as appearing chief monetary officer efficient on September 15.

“Mr. Riffel has served because the Firm’s Senior Vice President and Controller since September 1, 2023 and beforehand served because the Firm’s Vice President and Controller from July 1, 2021 to August 31, 2023, throughout which he led the Firm’s private-to-public accounting initiatives main as much as the Firm’s merger with Tailwind Two Acquisition Corp.,” Terran Orbital mentioned in a submitting with the Securities and Trade Fee (SEC).

Rocket Lab’s inventory continues to fall

Rocket Lab’s (Nasdaq: RKLB) inventory continued to fall following the failure of its Electron rocket to launch Capella House’s Acadia 2 Earth commentary satellite tv for pc on Tuesday (September 19). Shares fell from $5.05 to a low of $4.22 on Tuesday earlier than recovering to $4.62 in after-hours buying and selling. Rocket Lab shares closed down greater than 5 % to shut at $4.42 on Wednesday. Electron’s first stage carried out as designed, however an anomaly within the second stage precipitated it to fall into the ambiance and deplete. Video of the launch steered the second stage engine failed to fireplace correctly.

House SPAC Index
September 20, 2023

AST SpaceMobile Achieves 5G Broadband Connectivity

AST SpaceMobile (Nasdaq: ASTS) announced it achieved the first-ever 5G satellite-to-cell telephone connection for voice and knowledge utilizing an unmodified cell phone and its BlueWalker 3 communications satellite tv for pc. The decision was produced from Hawaii.

“The 5G name was positioned on September 8, 2023, from an unmodified Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone situated close to Hana, HI, in a wi-fi useless zone,” the corporate mentioned in a press launch. “5G connectivity testing was accomplished with our companions Vodafone, AT&T and Nokia. In a separate take a look at, the corporate broke its earlier space-based mobile broadband knowledge session document by reaching a obtain price of roughly 14 Mbps.”

Spire wins 2 contracts, companions with ESA

Spire World’s (NYSE: SPIR) U.S. subsidiary won a 12-month, $2.9 million contract from the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) beneath a pilot program to supply business knowledge about ocean floor winds (OSW) that will probably be used to enhance climate forecasting fashions.

“For this Pilot Research, NOAA will assess the standard and influence of obtainable business international navigation satellite tv for pc system reflectometry (GNSS-R) observations for the measurement of OSW and different traits. NOAA will use Pilot Research knowledge to enhance upon NOAA’s derived wind pace merchandise and examine the utility of derived wind pace merchandise developed by business distributors,” the company introduced in a press launch.

Spire World gained a separate contract to supply aviation insights to Estuaire, a knowledge firm that assists the aviation trade with lowering its environmental influence.

“Spire will present its detailed plane positional knowledge, in addition to its Flight Report, which aggregates tons of of thousands and thousands of every day satellite tv for pc and terrestrial ADS-B positions into an simply accessible one-row-per-flight info enriched with all of the flight and plane knowledge, for post-flight analytics and reporting wants,” Spire mentioned in a press launch.

Spire has partnered with the European House Company to develop a system named EURIALO that can enhance the monitoring of plane. EURIALO will depend on present telecommunication indicators that every one planes emit to trace plane areas. The system is designed to beat the technical limitations of the ADS-B transponder beacons that plane use to broadcast their positions.

Virgin Galactic’s subsequent prospects recognized

Virgin Galactic (NYSE: SPCE) has scheduled its fourth business suborbital for October 5. Three prospects have been publicly recognized as being on the flight:

• Trevor Beattie, a British promoting government,
• Ron Rosano, an area and astronomy training from america, and
• Namira Saleem, a Pakistani polar adventurer and artist who based House Belief, a non-profit that promotes area as a frontier for peace.

Satellogic and Skyloom workforce for high-capacity knowledge

Satellogic (Nasdaq: SATL) has signed an settlement to combine Skyloom’s Optical Communications Terminal (OCT) on its satellites. Satellogic will use OCTs to check new strategies for delivering Earth commentary knowledge by means of SkyCompass-1, the geostationary orbit-based community infrastructure that Skyloom developed with its companion, House Compass. Satellogic will even use OCTs to instantly obtain knowledge to a gateway. The businesses mentioned the partnership will enable them to supply high-capacity knowledge transmission with low latency.

Momentus to ship scholar payload to orbit

Momentus (Nasdaq: MNTS) has signed a contract with Denmark’s Aarhus College to supply in-space transportation service for a satellite tv for pc that will probably be launched in late 2024. The coed-built DISCO-2 satellite tv for pc will present knowledge for local weather monitoring.

Planet Labs CEO acquires inventory

Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall acquired 100,000 shares within the firm at a value of $2.6984 every, in accordance with a SEC submitting. Marshall holds 1.4 million shares in Planet. The submitting mentioned 28,314 shares have been disposed of at a value of $2.80 apiece in cost of the withholding tax legal responsibility incurred upon the vesting of restricted inventory items.

Planet receives JPL imaging spectrometer

Planet Labs (NYSE: PL) has received an imaging spectrometer developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for integration onto the corporate’s Tanager 1 hyperspectral satellite tv for pc. The instrument will probably be used to detect and quantify the sources of methane and carbon dioxide emissions. Tanager is scheduled for launch in 2024. Planet is constructing two Tanager satellites as a part of the public-private Carbon Mapper Coalition partnership.