Payload

Quantum imaging startup Diffraqtion announced more than $5M in additional funding on Monday, more than doubling its pre-seed from when it first closed in January. The MA-based company is building cameras for space using quantum imaging and AI to either spot faraway objects, or to see closer objects clearly with a much smaller lens. The aim is to cut both processing time and cost, using the tech to give exquisite capability for a fraction of the usual price. Since the company emerged from stealth with its pre-seed round this year, it’s notched some milestones, including: 🔭 Demoing its tech at a terrestrial observatory. 🛰️ Securing a SBIR Phase I award from NASA for tracking space debris. 💸 Winning NASA’s Space to Soil Challenge, in which companies designed small-sat missions using advanced computing to study the Earth. That came with a $100,000 prize. Read the full story from Payload editor Jacqueline Feldscher online. Link below.

NASA’s newest telescope faces a long trip and months of calibration, but the team hopes its first images arrive as a new year’s gift to the world. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched at 7:26 am ET on Sunday from KSC aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, starting its journey to Lagrange Point 2 and beginning a lengthy commissioning period. The flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets while supporting a broad range of supplemental research. Roman’s field of view is at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s—enough to measure light from a billion galaxies over its lifetime. Read the full breakdown of the mission from Payload reporter Victoria Woodburn. Link to the story below.

Speaker announcement: Elizabeth Kryst, CEO of ispace-U.S., is joining us at Off World. Kryst became CEO in 2025 after overseeing development of the APEX 1.0 lunar lander, and now leads the company's push to qualify as a prime contractor for U.S. government lunar missions. Catch her September 23-24 at Space Center Houston. Buy tickets: https://lnkd.in/g4d9SGHy

Speaker announcement: Brian Taylor, founder and CEO of Lux Aeterna, is joining us at Off World. Taylor is building the first fully reusable satellite bus, aiming to make satellites as reusable as rockets, after engineering roles at SpaceX, Amazon's Project Kuiper, and Loft Orbital. Catch him September 23-24 at Space Center Houston. Buy tickets: https://lnkd.in/g4d9SGHy

Finnish SAR satellite manufacturer ICEYE opened three new international offices this week, in the Netherlands, Korea, and India, to capitalize on growing demand for sovereign satellite capabilities from national governments and MoDs. Each location has different priorities: the Netherlands on engineering and R&D with the Dutch defense industrial base, Korea on local defense and intelligence customers, and India on manufacturing and supply-chain capacity. The expansion follows a €450M raise in June that pushed ICEYE’s Series F past €1B, plus new offices in Portugal, Germany, and the UAE. The company can build 50 SAR sats a year and expects to double that next year, but demand still outruns supply. Its backlog stood at €1.5B at the start of 2026. Read the full breakdown of ICEYE’s expansion strategy from Payload reporter Douglas Gorman. Link in the comments.

There was a lot to celebrate at this year’s Small Satellite Conference (SmallSat) in Utah: new payload technologies, next-gen satellite platforms, a slew of collaborative contracts, and a more favorable funding market than any year in recent memory. But looming over all of it was launch. As fears grow that SpaceX rideshares might be going the way of the Northrop Grumman Pegasus, exhibitions from Exolaunch and SEOPS, two integrators who have purchased Falcon 9s to run their own rideshare programs, were packed to the gills. French broker RIDE! announced a deal with MaiaSpace on Monday for capacity on up to six flights beginning in 2028. Operators aren’t stepping off the gas, though. The Aerospace Corporation has four commercial partners lined up for DiskSat, its flat-satellite design built to fit more spacecraft in a typical rocket fairing, and the floor was full of announcements on laser comms, low-latency ground networks, and edge compute. Read the full breakdown of SmallSat 2026 from Payload reporter Douglas Gorman. Link in the comments.

Montreal-based NorthStar Earth & Space will put SDA sensors on Toronto-based Kepler Communications Inc. spacecraft, the companies announced Wednesday, expanding a partnership aimed at meeting demand for real-time space domain awareness. NorthStar is expected to go public via SPAC next quarter on the strength of its cross-border SDA sales, which combine its own optical satellite sensors with RF and ground-radar observations from third parties. In July, the company signed a $40M+ CDN deal with the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 3 Canadian Space Division, Canada’s equivalent of the US Space Force. Read the full breakdown of the partnership, and Canada’s domestic space pursuits, from Elizabeth Howell. Link in the comments.

LeoLabs is applying its radar tech to national security missions under a new $20.68M contract with the Space Force. The deal is a Prototype Other Transaction Agreement, a vehicle that lets the Pentagon skip standard procurement to try new tech quickly. Under it, LeoLabs will deliver one Scout radar modified for the national security mission. Scout, unveiled in April 2025, is a mobile radar roughly the size of a shipping container, which can be deployed anywhere to collect orbital intel. LeoLabs deployed its first Scout in June in the Indo-Pacific, and within hours of turning on, it began tracking China’s spaceplane. Read the full breakdown of the award, and LeoLabs’ push into the defense market, from Jacqueline Feldscher. Link in the comments.

Solar storms will cost the global economy $20.65B this year, rising to $44.27B in annualized losses by 2035, according to a new report from Mission Space | Space Weather. Where 2026's losses sit: ⚡ Power grids are the most exposed at $12.88B; 🚜 GNSS-dependent ground economy comes next at $3.23B; 🛰️ Space infrastructure and connectivity follow at $2.21B. By 2035, orbital and beyond-Earth channels go from 17% of expected loss to 42%. Orbital compute grows fastest with a 25x jump to $3.26B. Read the full breakdown, including what it means for lunar surface operations, from Payload reporter Victoria Woodburn. Link in the comments.