Reuters
Spain’s PLD Space has extended its Series C financing with an additional €108 million, bringing the round’s total to €288 million. The launch company is raising capital as it prepares for the first flight of its Miura 5 orbital rocket.
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MaiaSpace has completed another upper-stage validation campaign for its Maia launcher, advancing development ahead of the vehicle’s planned orbital debut in 2027. The milestone marks continued progress toward the launcher’s first flight and commercial introduction.
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Spain’s PLD Space has extended its Series C financing with an additional €108 million, bringing the round’s total to €288 million. The launch company is raising capital as it prepares for the first flight of its Miura 5 orbital rocket.
NATO fighter aircraft were scrambled overnight after drones approached the airspace of Estonia and Latvia, with one drone entering Estonian airspace near the Russian border. Estonian authorities issued an air-threat warning, while Turkish F-16s operating from Ämari Air Base responded under NATO air-policing duties.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir and French astronaut Sophie Adenot are scheduled to conduct the sixth all-female spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Sept. 1. The extravehicular activity will be streamed live, highlighting continued international participation in ISS operations and human spaceflight.
Six missions are scheduled across launch sites in Norway, India, New Zealand and the United States from Aug. 31 to Sept. 6. Isar Aerospace is targeting the second flight of its Spectrum rocket, while ISRO pursues an Earth-observation launch and SpaceX continues Starlink missions from Vandenberg.
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OHB has won a contract worth more than $1 billion to build the MEO satellite layer of Europe’s IRIS² constellation. Separate agreements cover Italy’s PRISMA Second Generation, constellr’s HiVE thermal-imaging platforms and ESA’s FALCON consortium for tracking uncontrolled atmospheric reentries.
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Global passenger demand rose 0.2% year over year in July 2026, while capacity increased 0.3% and the load factor slipped 0.1 percentage points to 85.2%. International traffic declined 0.1%, but excluding the Middle East, demand grew 1.5%; air cargo demand increased 3.9% across all regions.
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