#WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force on Dec. 8 officially activated its first component dedicated to both Europe and Africa. The new unit, known as U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa, will support U.S. European Command (EUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Headquartered at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, the Space Force component will be led by U.S. Space Force Col. Max Lantz and staffed by approximately 30 service members.

The new component will support EUCOM’s growing need for space-based capabilities such as satellite navigation and communications.

With an increasing number of military assets reliant on space-based technologies, the need for specialized expertise and dedicated resources is more crucial than ever, said Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force

#WASHINGTON — NorthStar Earth and Space has raised another $15 million to support its first four satellites for tracking objects in orbit, the Canadian company said Dec. 6 as it waits on Rocket Lab to get back to flight so they can launch on a future mission.

The Series D funding round comes after NorthStar said in January it had amassed nearly $100 million in total for building out a space situational awareness (SSA) business.

An initial batch of satellites provided by Spire Global was due to launch this summer with Virgin Orbit before the air-launch company fell into bankruptcy in April.

#WASHINGTON — Capella Space will launch two radar imaging satellites on SpaceX rideshare missions after an Electron launch failure disrupted its deployment plans.

Capella announced Dec. 5 that it had arranged to fly two of its Acadia satellites on SpaceX rideshare missions in the first half of 2024. Acadia-4 will fly on the Bandwagon-1 mission as soon as April 2024 while Acadia-5 will launch on Transporter-11 no earlier than June 2024. The Transporter-11 mission was arranged through launch services company Exolaunch.

Capella said in a statement that the arrangements allow for a diversity of orbits for its spacecraft. Bandwagon-1 is the first of a new line of dedicated rideshare missions that SpaceX announced earlier this year that will go to mid-inclination orbits, rather than sun-synchronous orbits accessed by Transporter missions.

#WASHINGTON — A new report predicts that around 20,000 new satellites will launch by the end of the decade — a more conservative forecast compared to other sky-high projections.

Quilty Space, a research and consulting firm, says there are “positive indicators for sustained growth within the space industrial base, particularly given continuing momentum in the low Earth orbit broadband mega-constellation markets that make up about 85% of all satellite demand in Western markets.

#WASHINGTON — The head of NASA’s space technology directorate warned an advisory group of a “significant impact” to some programs if the Senate version of an appropriations bill for 2024 becomes law.
Speaking at a Nov. 30 meeting of the #NASA Advisory Council’s technology, innovation and engineering meeting, Prasun Desai, acting associate administrator for space technology at the agency, said that both House and Senate spending bills for fiscal year 2024 fall short of the administration’s request of $1.392 billion for space technology.

The House version would provide the Space #Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) with $1.205 billion. That would be essentially the same as what space technology received in 2023, excluding inflation adjustments.