April Mergers & Acquisitions
April 2 – Iridium Communications, Inc. (Iridium) announced that it completed the acquisition of positioning, navigation and timing start-up Satelles, Inc., rebranded as Iridium STL. Iridium expects the time and location services offered by Iridium STL to generate more than $100m in annual revenues by 2030.
April 5 – European space consulting firms Euroconsult S.A. and SpaceTec Partners, Inc. announced that they are merging to form Novaspace, which will offer services in management and technical consulting, events, and market intelligence.
April 15 – Aerospacelab S.A. announced that it closed the acquisition of Belgian optics manufacturer Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems S.A.
April 30 – SES S.A. announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Intelsat S.A. for $3.1b, subject to regulatory approvals. The transaction, which is expected to close in the second half of 2025, stands to produce a multiorbit satellite operator with roughly $4b in annual revenue and 100 geostationary and 26 medium Earth orbit satellites.
April Investment Activity
On April 22, Venture capital firm Seraphim Space Manager LLP announced the establishment of Seraphim Space Ventures II LP, a new venture fund formed in partnership with Eutelsat Communications S.A., NEC Corporation and SKY Perfect JSAT Group, which will focus on seed- and Series Astage companies engaged in space-based computing, microgravity research and space/terrestrial hybrid communications.
April Fundraising Transactions
April 5 – In-space manufacturing and research start-up Varda Space Industries, Inc. raised $90m in a Series B funding round led by Caffeinated Capital, with participation from Lux Capital Management, LLC, General Catalyst Group Management, LLC, Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, LLC.
April 17 – Synthetic aperture radar satellite operator Iceye Oy closed a $93m investment round led by Finnish sovereign wealth fund Solidium Oy, with participation from Move Capital Fund I and Blackwells Capital LLC.
April 23 – Spanish launch start-up Payload Aerospace S.L. announced that a recent funding round of unspecified value brought to €100m the total amount of funding that it has raised to date.
April Financing Round-up
April 1 – Telesat Corporation announced that its low-Earth orbit Lightspeed constellation, which will be operated by subsidiary Telesat LEO Inc. (Telesat LEO), will receive an additional $1.6b in debt financing from the Canadian government in exchange for warrants for 10% of the common stock of Telesat LEO, based on an equity valuation of $3b.
April 2 – HawkEye 360, Inc. announced that it received $40m in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank, which the company plans to use to make improvements to its infrastructure and to continue the production and deployment of its radio-frequency remote sensing satellite constellation.
April Launch Missions Performed
April 1, 5, 6, 10, 12, 17, 18, 23, 28 – Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) successfully launched batches of 22, 23, 21, 23, 23, 23, 23, 23 and 23 Starlink satellites, each time using a Falcon 9 launch vehicle and recovering the vehicle's first stage.
April 7 –SpaceX successfully performed the inaugural mission of its Bandwagon dedicated mid-inclination orbit rideshare program, delivering 11 payloads to orbit, including six satellites for HawkEye 360, Inc. and the Acadia-4 synthetic aperture radar satellite for Capella Space Corp., using a Falcon 9 launch vehicle and then recovering the vehicle's first stage.
April 9 – United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully performed the sixteenth and final flight of its Delta IV Heavy launch vehicle, deploying an unspecified payload for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office. ULA operated the Delta IV Heavy for nearly two decades after an initial launch in December 2004.
April 24 – Rocket Lab USA, Inc. successfully launched the NEONSAT-1 earth observation satellite for the Korea Advanced Institute of Technology and NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System on an Electron launch vehicle.
April 28 –SpaceX successfully launched the Galileo L12 mission for the European Space Agency, delivering two Galileo navigation satellites to medium Earth orbit.
April Launch Services Orders
On April 18, Italian Internet-of-Things start-up Apogeo Space S.r.l. announced that it selected South Korean launch start-up Innospace Co. Ltd. to perform three launch missions for the deployment of its planned constellation of picosatellites using the HANBIT launch vehicle beginning in 2025.
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