Daily Brief : May 16: Orbital power grid and magnetosphere imaging reshape space infrastructure

HEADLINE

Star Catcher locks $65M to build the first commercial power grid in orbit, while ESA launches SMILE on Monday to reveal how Earth's magnetosphere responds to solar storms.

THE BIG PICTURE

Capital this week is flowing toward infrastructure layers that have been fixed for decades. Star Catcher is removing the power constraint that has throttled every satellite ever launched, while SMILE provides the real-time data that space operators need to forecast solar weather and protect their spacecraft. Together, these moves suggest the space economy is maturing past applications and into the boring-but-critical stuff: reliable power and accurate forecasting.

WHAT HAPPENED

Star Catcher Industries, founded less than two years ago in Jacksonville, Florida, closed a $65 million oversubscribed Series A on May 12 to build what it calls the first commercial power grid in orbit. The company's constellation of satellites harvests solar energy and beams it via optical lasers to other spacecraft, allowing customer satellites to scale available power by up to 10 times without hardware changes. B Capital led the round, with co-leads from Shield Capital and Cerberus Ventures; total capital raised now sits at $88 million. The demand signal is live before the first demo flies. Star Catcher has signed seven power purchase agreements and multiple government contracts, with a qualified commercial pipeline representing more than $3 billion in projected annual recurring revenue. Customers include Starcloud, Loft Orbital, and Astro Digital alongside unnamed government stakeholders. Retired Gen. John W. 'Jay' Raymond, the first Chief of Space Operations of the U.S. Space Force, will join the board. CEO Andrew Rush said the raise 'underscores the conviction that orbital infrastructure is now as fundamental as terrestrial infrastructure,' framing every major space application from connectivity to national-security sensing as power-limited today.

The European Space Agency's SMILE mission, developed jointly with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, launches Monday, May 19 at 05:52 CEST on a Vega-C rocket from French Guiana. The spacecraft carries the first X-ray camera ever designed to image Earth's magnetosphere in real time, plus an ultraviolet camera that can observe the northern lights continuously for 45 hours. SMILE will operate from an egg-shaped orbit that swings out 121,000 kilometers above the North Pole before returning to 5,000 kilometers above the South Pole to download data. Solar storms regularly disable GPS, knock out power grids, and blind satellite communications; SMILE will show operators for the first time how Earth's magnetic shield responds to the Sun, dramatically improving space weather forecasting that every orbital operator, including Star Catcher's future fleet, depends on. The mission marks the first fully joint ESA-Chinese spacecraft selection, design, implementation, launch, and operations, a significant diplomatic partnership at a moment of geopolitical tension.

WATCHING

Star Catcher's first in-space power-beaming demonstration is scheduled for later in 2026, watch for launch announcements and early performance data that will validate whether 10x power scaling is real or marketing. SMILE's first imagery from the magnetosphere should arrive within weeks of Monday's launch; abnormally quiet or dramatic space weather during the commissioning phase will either confirm or challenge the mission's scientific value.