The Federal Communications Commission made two significant moves this week that together paint a clear picture: the agency is on a mission to make America the global leader in direct-to-device satellite connectivity.

First, the big-picture move. The FCC’s Space Bureau released a decision reaffirming exclusive spectrum rights for existing licensees in key direct-to-device frequency bands — and dismissed multiple requests from rival operators to enter those same bands. The Bureau also rejected two petitions that sought to rewrite the agency’s longstanding spectrum rules.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called direct-to-device connectivity — meaning fast, broadband service delivered directly from a satellite to your standard smartphone — one of the most exciting frontiers in wireless communications. He said the FCC is laser-focused on making its rules as friendly as possible for investment and innovation in this space, and promised more actions to come.

In the 18 months leading up to this week, there’s been more than 28 billion dollars in deal flow across at least 130 megahertz of spectrum intended for direct-to-device services. Chairman Carr called consumers the big winners as competition in this market intensifies.

The second and more specific action directly benefited AST SpaceMobile, a company based in Midland, Texas. The FCC granted AST a permanent commercial license — formally clearing a 248-satellite constellation in low Earth orbit to deliver cellular broadband coverage directly to unmodified smartphones across the United States.

This isn’t a minor update. The FCC order substantially expands AST’s previously authorized constellation from 25 satellites to 248, using premium low-band spectrum — 700 megahertz and 800 megahertz — frequencies known for superior signal penetration and coverage range, especially in rural and underserved areas. The service is designed to work with existing phones through AST’s partnerships with Verizon, AT&T, and FirstNet — the national public safety broadband network. No new device. No new plan. Your current phone would simply connect to space when you’re outside terrestrial range.

Deployment milestones are binding: AST must get at least 124 satellites into orbit by August 2nd, 2030, and have the full 248-satellite system operational by August 2nd, 2033.

The company isn’t without challenges. Its seventh operational broadband satellite — BlueBird 7 — ended up in a lower-than-planned orbit following a Blue Origin New Glenn launch from Kennedy Space Center on April 19th. The company is assessing its options. But the regulatory win is substantial. AST reported nearly $71 million in full-year 2025 revenue, and is targeting between 45 and 60 new satellite launches this year alone. Direct-to-device service in initial U.S. markets is the near-term goal.

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The IPO pipeline for commercial space is getting busier. HawkEye 360 — a radio frequency intelligence and geospatial analytics company — has officially launched its roadshow for a proposed initial public offering.

The company is offering 16 million shares of common stock, with an initial price expected to land between 24 and 26 dollars per share. The underwriters also have a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2.4 million shares at the offering price. HawkEye 360 plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HAWK.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading the offering as joint book-running managers, with RBC Capital Markets, Jefferies, and BofA Securities serving as additional managers. Baird, Raymond James, and William Blair round out the bookrunner team.

A registration statement has been filed with the SEC, but has not yet been declared effective. HawkEye 360 uses a constellation of satellites to detect and geolocate radio frequency signals — a capability with broad applications across maritime monitoring, national security, and commercial intelligence. This IPO, if priced at the midpoint, would value the offering at approximately 400 million dollars.

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There was a moment, not long ago, when space tourism felt like a billionaire’s novelty. A new market report suggests the business case has matured well beyond that.

According to a new analysis from HTF Market Intelligence Consulting, the global space exploration and tourism market is forecast to grow from $8.6 billion in 2025 to $35.9 billion by 2033 — a compound annual growth rate of 19.5 percent.

The report credits reusable rocket technology as the primary driver — the same innovation that made SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic viable — for dramatically lowering the cost of access to space. The market now encompasses suborbital civilian flights, private research missions, and longer-term concepts like orbital hotels and lunar stays.

Regionally, North America dominates — the U.S. leads the world in reusable rockets and crewed spacecraft. But Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region, with China, India, and Japan all expanding their space programs and commercial partnerships. Europe holds a significant share, backed by collaborative programs and strong government funding.

The regulatory environment is also evolving rapidly, with governments worldwide introducing licensing systems, safety standards, and liability frameworks to govern commercial human spaceflight. The analysts see space hotels, orbital stations, and lunar missions as the long-term opportunities that will carry this market well into the next decade.

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The small satellite market is heading into what analysts are calling its most consequential decade yet — and the numbers are staggering.

Space analytics firm Novaspace has released the 11th edition of its Prospects for the Small Satellite Market report, covering 2026 through 2035 — and the headline figure is nearly 16,900 small satellites projected to reach orbit over that period. That’s an average of about 1,410 pounds of hardware lifted to space every single day.

The report defines small satellites as spacecraft weighing under approximately 1,100 pounds — a category expected to account for one-third of all satellites launched in the period, though only 6 percent of total launch mass. Private investment in the sector reached about $11.5 billion in 2025 alone.

The big story isn’t just the volume — it’s the diversification. While SpaceX’s Starlink has historically dominated near-term smallsat demand, Novaspace sees national space programs increasingly stepping in. Sovereign governments are building their own constellations for security, communications resilience, and Earth observation, which distributes market demand across a wider, more stable customer base.

But the competitive picture is tightening. Novaspace highlights accelerating vertical integration among constellation operators — meaning the big players are building more of their own components in-house — which is squeezing the market for independent suppliers. The report noted that the smallsat market is entering a more mature phase, where industrial maturity, production readiness, and secure access to demand will determine who succeeds. The key question is no longer who has a concept, but who can execute at scale.

This is an industry in transition — from innovation to execution. The companies with established manufacturing, proven supply chains, and contracted customers are positioned to consolidate. Those still scaling face real headwinds.

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An investigation is complete — and we now know what brought down Australia’s first homegrown orbital rocket last summer.

Gilmour Space Technologies has released the findings from its investigation into the July 2025 in-flight failure of the Eris TestFlight1 rocket. The conclusion: electrical and thermal faults in the oxidizer pump system of two first-stage motors caused the loss of the vehicle.

The Eris rocket lifted off from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in Queensland on July 30th, 2025 — the nation’s first orbital launch attempt in more than 50 years. The vehicle climbed briefly before losing control and came down in the designated safety area approximately 14 seconds after liftoff.

According to the investigation, one of the four first-stage hybrid rocket motors lost thrust about nine seconds after ignition. A second motor followed at around 17 seconds. Together, the failures ended the mission before it ever had a chance.

Gilmour Space said in a statement — quote — “Analysis identified two independent failure modes originating from the oxidizer pump subsystem. Electrical and thermal faults were observed in the electric pump motors and associated inverters, including components sourced from an external supplier.”

Design, qualification, and process improvements are now underway. The company notes this test flight was always designed to generate data under real flight conditions — and they say that data is already informing updates to vehicle design and operations. A final report has been submitted to the Australian Space Agency.

CEO and co-founder Adam Gilmour said the next Eris rocket test is still planned for later this year. The company has since opened a representative office in South Australia and selected new laser communications technology for future missions. Additional launch attempts are planned for the latter portions of 2026.

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In-depth this week — we’re looking at something that didn’t make many headlines coming out of the 41st Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, but probably should have. [Paywall]

While the big crowds gathered around commercial space station displays and AI panels, two exhibits near the back of the hall at The Broadmoor quietly told a more commercially important story. And our in-depth analysis this week argues those two booths contained more actionable supply chain intelligence than most of the post-Symposium coverage combined.

Here’s the core argument: the space industry covers missions. Supply chains are harder to frame as a press moment. So they go unreported — and the commercial window they represent stays open longer for the people who are paying attention.

Signal One: Lunar Mobility. Bridgestone — yes, the tire company — had a display of next-generation lunar rover elastic wheel prototypes. No press release. No contract announcement. Just the wheels. And almost no one stopped.

That’s a mistake. Lunar surface mobility is one of the least-capitalized and most structurally necessary segments of the emerging lunar economy. Apollo-era wire-mesh wheels won’t cut it for Artemis. Polar terrain, abrasive regolith that’s never been weathered by wind or water, thermal swings of 300 degrees Celsius — those conditions require something categorically different. Bridgestone’s elastic wheel architecture uses thin metal spokes engineered to flex over obstacles without pressurized air — and the company has been developing it with JAXA since 2019. They’ve since signed joint development agreements with Astrobotic and ispace. Almost no one else is working at equivalent technical depth. That’s either a program resilience risk for NASA — or an investment thesis. Depending on which chair you’re sitting in.

Signal Two: Debris Detection. The Naval Research Laboratory showed a concept called LARADO — designed to detect small orbital debris objects too small for ground-based radar to track. Objects below ten centimeters. Objects that can still kill a satellite at orbital velocities. No production contract exists yet — but the policy environment around commercial space situational awareness is accelerating rapidly. The Space Domain Awareness market is estimated at $1.7 to $2.2 billion in 2025, growing toward 5 billion by the early 2030s. USSPACECOM has formally named SDA as a commercial procurement priority. A commercial operator that can build a LARADO-class debris sensing capability — and sell it as a subscription data product — is sitting in front of a government customer that has already pre-validated demand through official doctrine.

Signal Three: Proximity Operations. The Naval Research Lab also showcased a detailed model of its 45-by-100-foot Proximity Operations Laboratory — a simulation facility for rendezvous, docking, and robotic satellite grappling. On-orbit servicing is real and growing. Northrop Grumman has completed commercial life-extension missions. Astroscale has demonstrated debris inspection operations. The global on-orbit satellite servicing market is estimated at up to $4.7 billion today, with projections above 12 billion by 2034.

What the NRL exhibit made visible is that government still holds most of the foundational engineering knowledge — and translating it into a commercial supply chain is an unsolved industrial problem. Three chokepoints stand out: force-torque sensors and robotic actuators rated for vacuum and cryogenic conditions; proximity navigation guidance and control systems; and standardized grapple fixtures. That last one is the most urgent. When grapple fixture standards lock — expected within two to three years — qualified suppliers who moved early will have a structural moat. The window to influence the standard, or at least begin qualification against the leading design, is closing now.

The bottom line from all three signals: qualification timelines are long. Government-commercial data relationships are forming now. And early movers in each of these supply chain categories will be dramatically better positioned when procurement catches up to the opportunity — and it will.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab. They’ll also find additional exclusive in-depth coverage of the issues of interest at Space Symposium. And next week on The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast, I’ll be talking with Rich Cooper, vice president of Strategic Communications & Outreach at Space Foundation.

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The House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology has taken up the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining -- or SAT Streamlining Act.

The bill is aimed at modernizing how the Federal Communications Commission licenses satellite operators -- a process that industry witnesses say hasn’t kept pace with the realities of today’s market.

Tom Stroup, president of the Satellite Industry Association, told the subcommittee that the pace of satellite deployment has outstripped the regulatory framework designed to govern it.

“The current licensing regime was not designed for a world in which thousands of satellites are launched in a single year and constellations are replenished on multi-year cycles,” Stroup said. “SIA applauds the FCC’s creation of the Space Bureau to provide additional resources and focus in our industry, as well as its ongoing space modernization for the 21st century proceeding, which proposes to replace the legacy satellite rules with a new framework.”

One of the bill’s key provisions is a shot clock -- a deadline for the FCC to act on license applications. But that provision drew scrutiny. Kara Azokar, vice president of regulatory and public policy at Iridium, said that speed must be paired with deliberation.

“Shot clocks or deemed granted provisions are key to speeding up the process, but without a tolling provision that enables additional analysis in complex situations that require additional technical analysis, it could result in what Shiva mentioned, which is a rubber stamp,” she said. “And when an application is rubber stamped, it results in petitions for reconsideration, which results in uncertainty for licensees that have licenses that may conflict with the application, and the applicants that just got a grant can’t rely upon it. So a tolling provision, like what is in the bill, enables the FCC additional consideration to ensure regulatory certainty for all because technical considerations have been fully developed and decided upon.”

The stakes are particularly high for smaller operators. Shiva Goel, a partner at Wiley Rein, and former NTIA spectrum official and FCC advisor, told the subcommittee that delays hit emerging companies hardest.

“Smaller companies in particular have much more to lose and are much more vulnerable from delay. They don’t have war chests. They need to show their investors and customer base that they have a license and that they’re ready to go,” Goel said. “And they also need predictability and certainty about when they’re actually going to be able to operate.”

No vote has been scheduled. The subcommittee’s examination signals growing congressional interest in reshaping the regulatory environment for commercial space -- a dynamic worth watching for anyone with a satellite program in the pipeline.

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NASA is facing a potential spacesuit gap -- and the agency’s own inspector general is raising the alarm.

A new report from NASA’s Office of Inspector General finds the agency may not have flight-ready extravehicular activity suits in time to support planned lunar surface operations under the Artemis program.

The report identifies the Axiom Space suit -- developed under a NASA contract -- as the primary option for early Artemis lunar surface missions. But the OIG found development timelines are tight, testing milestones have slipped, and NASA lacks sufficient backup options if Axiom’s suit encounters further delays.

The report also flags the aging Extravehicular Mobility Units -- the suits currently used on the International Space Station -- as a near-term risk. The existing ISS suit inventory is limited, and production of replacement units has not kept pace with operational demand.

The inspector general’s recommendations center on NASA accelerating its suit certification milestones, establishing clearer contingency plans, and improving oversight of contractor performance. NASA management agreed with the recommendations but did not commit to specific corrective timelines in its formal response.

For the JSC audience, the supply chain dimension here is significant. Suit development draws on a narrow base of qualified fabricators for pressure garments, life support hardware, and thermal protection systems. Any slip in suit availability doesn’t just affect an astronaut’s schedule -- it can hold up an entire mission.

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The satellite communications market is on track for substantial long-term growth -- and a new market analysis puts a number on it.

According to a recent projection from Roots Analysis, the global satellite communications market is expected to top $391.45 billion by 2040. The growth is being driven by expanding broadband demand in underserved regions, the proliferation of low Earth orbit constellations, and increasing reliance on satellite connectivity for defense and government applications.

The analysis points to several demand drivers converging at once: growing maritime and aviation connectivity requirements, the buildout of direct-to-device services, and continued investment in national security communications infrastructure.

For context, that projected figure represents a market roughly two-and-a-half times the size of today’s satellite communications revenue base -- which means the infrastructure, manufacturing, and services needed to support it don’t fully exist yet. That gap is where the supply chain story lives.

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A new electric propulsion thruster has entered the commercial satellite market -- and its introduction comes at a moment when demand for in-space propulsion is accelerating.

The new thruster is designed for small to mid-sized satellites operating in low Earth orbit -- the same size class driving constellation buildout across both commercial and government programs. The system uses Hall-effect thruster technology, which ionizes and accelerates propellant using electromagnetic fields to generate thrust -- a well-established approach that trades raw power for efficiency and longevity.

The manufacturer says the new unit targets a market segment currently underserved by qualified, flight-heritage propulsion options. That’s a pointed commercial claim in an environment where supply chain leads for propulsion components have stretched to 12-to-18 months in some categories.

For program managers sourcing propulsion for constellation applications, new entrants with qualified hardware expand options at a moment when the incumbent supplier base is under strain. The question -- as with any new propulsion system -- is how quickly the thruster can accumulate the flight heritage that government and prime customers require before committing to a new vendor.

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This week on The Journal of Space Commerce podcast ... the space supply chain is under pressure, and the stress points are becoming harder to ignore.

Across propulsion, satellite manufacturing, and ground systems, lead times are stretching. Component shortages are cascading into integration delays. And demand -- as we just heard -- is not slowing down.

The core problem is structural. The commercial space market has scaled faster than the industrial base supporting it. Constellation operators are placing orders for hundreds of satellites. Defense programs are adding to that queue. And the supplier ecosystem -- particularly at the sub-tier level -- has not added capacity at the same pace.

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a white paper last month focused on the supply chain for the commercial space industry, and the findings may have been something of a wake-up call for the industry.

Steve Jordan Tomaszewski, vice president of Space Systems for AIA, told me on the podcast that the pressure is coming largely from the increasing demand for spacecraft and components for a variety of missions.

“Overall, that is a good problem to have. It means that space is being more and more useful in our everyday lives all around the world. And especially if we look for applications like using satellites for national security purposes,” Tomaszewski sadi. “If we’re looking at using satellites for exploration, for communications and more of commercial applications, there is just more and more demand happening today. However, we don’t see capacity and the manufacturing base able to keep up with that demand.”

That mismatch has a direct cost. Delayed deliveries push out revenue. Program slips create downstream schedule conflicts. And in a market where launch windows are finite, a supply chain miss can mean a missed orbit.

You can find The Journal of Space Commerce podcast on Substack, or wherever you download your multi-media content

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In Depth this week,

NASA’s Space Reactor One -- called SR-1 Freedom -- is the agency’s plan to launch the first fission-powered spacecraft in American history. The target launch date: December 2028. The destination: Mars orbit. [Paywall]

The hardware architecture combines a closed Brayton cycle fission reactor -- generating more than 20 kilowatts of electrical power -- with the Power and Propulsion Element previously built for the now-canceled Lunar Gateway space station. That reuse strategy is deliberate: NASA is engineering for speed, not maximum performance, and the use of previously qualified hardware reduces development risk. The reactor will be fueled by high-assay low-enriched uranium -- known as HALEU -- and will drive ion thrusters that propel the spacecraft to Mars. It would be the first time fission-generated electricity has been used for interplanetary propulsion.

The mission’s payload is called Skyfall -- a suite of Ingenuity-class helicopters designed to operate on the Martian surface.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has described the reactor as “mostly built.” But the primary schedule risks are not in the hardware -- they’re in system integration, HALEU fuel delivery, and a four-layer regulatory authorization process that includes Presidential-level sign-off.

That fuel dependency is worth underscoring. HALEU -- enriched to between five and twenty percent U-235 -- is currently produced at commercial scale by exactly one U.S. facility: Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. SR-1’s fuel needs are manageable. But the signal SR-1’s success sends -- to NASA, to the Department of Defense, and to commercial operators -- will accelerate follow-on demand that the current enrichment base may not be able to meet.

The competitive context is also explicit. China has identified nuclear propulsion as a strategic priority. The National Space Technology and Management directive issued earlier this month frames American leadership in space nuclear power as a national objective -- not just an R-and-D ambition.

The industrial base companies positioned in this supply chain include BWX Technologies -- the only publicly traded, pure-play space nuclear contractor with demonstrated flight hardware capability -- as well as the IX joint venture between Intuitive Machines and X-energy, and Westinghouse, which is developing HALEU transport infrastructure through a January 2026 agreement with Nuclear Transport Solutions.

No prime integrator for SR-1’s reactor system has been publicly named as of this week.

Steve Sinacore, NASA’s program executive for Fission Surface Power, explained during the NASA Ignition event what nuclear power will mean for the future of the space program.

“Nuclear power in space does not just enhance deep space exploration, it enables it. Through increased energy density, nuclear power will keep lunar bases operating through the 14-day, 354-hour night. It will power the missions on the surface of Mars, where without it, the alternative is football fields of solar panels that will be ineffective during dust storms,” Sinacor said. “And nuclear power provides the continuous, reliable, and plentiful energy that will enable surface manufacturing and the ability to make propellant on Mars that brings crews home. Future sustained robotic or human presence missions will require the energy density that nuclear power provides.”

Sinacore said that SR-1 Freedom will be a physical manifestation of American leadership in space.

“Space Reactor One Freedom will unleash American ingenuity to get America underway in space on nuclear power, enable extraordinary science on Mars with the delivery of Skyfall, and set a precedent for all future space nuclear endeavors. SR-1 Freedom will put the United States of America in the driver’s seat of this enabling technology.”

The full SR-1 Freedom supply chain analysis -- including named companies, the HALEU chokepoint, and the four regulatory hurdles before launch -- is available now for paid subscribers at exterrajsc.com under the Market Insights tab.

Other premium articles this week include what the SATELLITE 2026 hype left out, a look at the Artemis cadence math, and columnist Mike Daily explores the Mahanian Lesson in orbit.

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Worth a Second Look:

Collaboration Pioneers ‘Lunar Iron’ for Lunar Base Infrastructure

Dream Chaser Spaceplane Completes Launch Acoustic Milestone

Spanish Propulsion Startup Wins Contract for Reusable Spaceplane

RAVEN Shuttle, NEST Depot Comprise Orbit Fab In-Space Refueling Network

The Refueling Layer [Paywall]

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The Federal Communications Commission is on the verge of a major overhaul in how satellites share spectrum — and the economic stakes are enormous.

F-C-C Chairman Brendan Carr announced the Commission will vote on a new order to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules. If adopted, the changes could unlock more than two billion dollars in economic benefits and enable up to seven times more capacity for space-based broadband services.

At the heart of the order is a proposal to replace the decades-old Equivalent Power Flux Density framework — known as EPFD — with modern, performance-based rules that account for today’s satellite technology, including adaptive coding and modulation.

Under the new approach, non-geostationary and geostationary orbit operators would be encouraged to negotiate voluntary, private agreements for interference protections — a shift the F-C-C says builds on its time-tested framework for good-faith coordination.

In a news release posted online, Carr said “The FCC is moving fast to unleash affordable, high-speed Internet.”

The public draft was released ahead of the Commission’s next monthly open meeting scheduled for April 30th.

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Amazon is making its most significant move yet in the satellite connectivity market — agreeing to acquire Globalstar in a deal that would dramatically expand its Amazon Leo network and add direct-to-device service to its growing low Earth orbit system.

Under the terms of the merger agreement, Globalstar stockholders will receive either 90 dollars per share in cash or Amazon stock of equivalent value. The transaction is expected to close in 2027, pending regulatory approvals and certain satellite deployment milestones.

The deal brings together Globalstar’s mobile satellite service spectrum licenses — which carry global authorizations — with Amazon Leo’s broadband infrastructure. That combination would allow Amazon to deliver continuous connectivity for consumer, enterprise, and government customers well beyond the reach of traditional cellular networks.

The acquisition also carries strategic urgency for Amazon. The company faces an F-C-C deadline to have 1,616 Leo satellites in orbit by July 30th of this year — a threshold that determines whether it retains full licensed spectrum rights. Acquiring Globalstar’s existing fleet and spectrum gives Amazon a significant shortcut.

Alongside the merger, Amazon and Apple announced a separate agreement for Amazon Leo to power satellite services for iPhone and Apple Watch — including Emergency S-O-S via satellite — building on the partnership Apple currently holds with Globalstar.

Beginning in 2028, Amazon Leo plans to deploy its own next-generation direct-to-device satellite system, offering voice, data, and messaging to mobile phones and cellular devices.

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A spacecraft manufacturer building rapidly maneuverable vehicles for operations across and between orbital regimes has closed a 50-million-dollar Series A round.

Portal Space Systems says the financing was led by Geodesic Capital and Mach33, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures, ARK Invest, AlleyCorp, and FUSE. The round follows a $17.5 million seed round in 2025 — one of the largest publicly disclosed seed financings in the sector at the time.

The investment reflects a growing recognition across both commercial and defense markets that access to orbit is no longer enough. Most satellites today are designed for fixed mission profiles with limited maneuverability — a liability as space becomes more congested, contested, and operationally complex.

The participation of Booz Allen Ventures would appear to signal particular interest from the national security community.

Portal C-E-O Jeff Thornburg said in a news release that ‘the systems that succeed in this next phase of space exploration will be those that can move quickly, deliberately, and repeatedly across and between orbits.”

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As the number of objects in orbit continues to grow, one company is betting that operators need a single platform that takes them from detection all the way to decision — without ever switching screens.

Slingshot Aerospace this week introduced Slingshot Portal — an A-I-native platform built to support mission-ready space operations across defense, civil, and commercial sectors. The company calls it the first platform purpose-built to operationalize what it terms Space Operations Intelligence and Autonomy in live mission environments.

For more on what Slingshot Portal means for space domain awareness, I recently spoke with Erik Ekwurzel — Chief Data and Information Officer at Slingshot Aerospace.

(See Transcript Provided with Podcast)

Slingshot demonstrated the technology this week at Space Symposium, with additional capabilities — including advanced maneuver intelligence and predictive analytics — rolling out throughout 2026.

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Defense and space technology company Voyager Technologies says it has doubled satellite propulsion production capacity at its Denver-area facility over the past year — and is already planning to double it again.

The Voyager Littleton, Colorado facility has grown from 8,000 to 40,000 square feet following its October 2025 acquisition of ExoTerra Resource, a developer of electric propulsion systems. The expansion added workforce, test equipment, and training — and has enabled full vertical integration of mission-critical propulsion technologies.

Each propulsion module integrates a propellant tank, electronics controller, thruster, and distribution system into a compact unit engineered for precise orbital maneuvering, threat avoidance, and sustained mission effectiveness.

Matt Magaña, Voyager’s president of Space, Defense and National Security, tied the expansion directly to the current national security environment, citing programs like Golden Dome.

Voyager says it holds propulsion module contracts across both commercial and government customers and is targeting quadruple its year-ago capacity.

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And finally — what happens when a government program doesn’t get cancelled, but doesn’t move forward either?

In Depth this week, for dozens of companies deep in the supply chain behind NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations program — known as C-L-D — that question is no longer hypothetical. [Paywall]

On January 28th, NASA’s Johnson Space Center posted a short notice to the federal contracting database S-A-M-dot-gov, which said “This modification is to notify industry that the Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destination Contract acquisition is on hold until further notice.”

Five words: “On hold until further notice.”

That language does not trigger a termination settlement. It does not create a formal recovery pathway. And it does not release suppliers from program commitments their prime contractors still expect them to honor if Phase 2 restarts.

The hold did not come without warning. In August 2025, NASA had already restructured the entire Phase 2 acquisition — shifting from a firm-fixed-price federal contract to Funded Space Act Agreements — citing a four-billion-dollar budget shortfall. The procurement pause arrived before any of that could be executed.

Then came March 24th. During a House Science Committee hearing, NASA officials unveiled a new concept called “Ignition” — a government-owned core module attached to the I-S-S, with private companies docking commercial add-ons before eventually separating into free-flying stations. NASA signaled it could afford only a single commercial provider. Commercial Space Federation President Dave Cavossa testified it was, quote, “sowing concern and, really, sowing confusion.”

For tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers — the companies building life-support systems, solar arrays, propulsion hardware, and pressurized module structures — pipeline commitments built around a specific station configuration could now be stranded in a competition that selects only one winner.

There is a critical legal distinction: a formal cancellation triggers defined settlement protections. A procurement hold that arrives before contract execution does not. Most suppliers who aligned capacity to C-L-D hold only teaming agreements or verbal commitments — instruments with zero formal cost-recovery protection.

The question for every supplier in this pipeline is not whether Phase 2 will restart. It is what legal instrument you hold today — and whether your committed costs have any recovery pathway if it doesn’t.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab. Other premium articles this week include The Space Commerce Cycle in 2026, how SpaceX’s engine production rate became the invisible chokepoint in NASA’s lunar architecture, and columnist Mike Daily explores why NASA and DoD approvals have become vendor selection tools for enterprise customers.

Worth a Second Look

Space Control Platform MDA Midnight Unveiled by MDA Space

On-Orbit Precision Acquisition and Tracking Demonstrated by Star Catcher

NASA Awards Seventh Private Astronaut Mission to Voyager

Satellite Constellation Expansion Planned by Vantor

Satellite Broadcast’s Final Chapter [Paywall]

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The European Union is pressing ahead with its landmark EU Space Act — even as the regulation faces mounting legal questions from its own advisers and a sharp rebuke from the United States government.

The Council of the EU circulated a Presidency compromise text this spring, with a key negotiating session scheduled for April 21st. But the road to final agreement is getting more complicated by the week.

Here’s the backdrop: the EU Space Act is designed to replace a patchwork of national licensing regimes. Thirteen EU member states have enacted their own space laws — often with conflicting standards. The act would create one unified framework covering safety, resilience and environmental sustainability, and it would establish a new certification system called the EU Space Authorization — or EUSA — for satellite operators, launch providers and related space services companies.

But the Council’s own Legal Service raised red flags in a January opinion, concluding that while the act’s core provisions are legally sound, its reach into the downstream data economy is questionable. Specifically, the legal advisers warned that requiring so-called “primary providers” — satellite communications and Earth observation companies that act as data intermediaries — to verify that all their data comes from EUSA-compliant satellites may be disproportionate. The opinion stated, quote, “In the absence of adequate evidence and explanation, it is questionable whether this approach is proportionate and remains within the limits of the proposed legal basis,” end quote.

And that’s not the only pressure point.

The United States government formally objected to the draft regulation in November 2025, with the State Department submitting comments calling several provisions, quote, “unacceptable regulatory burdens” on American companies doing business in Europe.

The Office of Space Commerce coordinated the U.S. response — working with more than 70 American companies and multiple trade associations. Washington’s position: the EU Space Act contradicts commitments made under a U.S.-EU framework agreement signed in August 2025 aimed at reducing non-tariff trade barriers.

The U.S. is asking Brussels to align the act with internationally agreed guidelines rather than writing new unilateral standards, to create clear equivalency pathways for non-EU operators, and to publish key implementation details directly in the regulation text — rather than leaving them to be filled in later by Commission officials.

The anti-circumvention provisions targeting so-called “gatekeeper” entities in the data market remain the most contested elements. Those provisions drew both the legal proportionality concerns from the EU’s own lawyers and the trade objections from Washington. The April 21st working party session will be a critical test of whether negotiators can resolve those issues — or whether this landmark regulation hits another wall.

All delegations currently have scrutiny reservations on the text. In plain language: nobody has signed off yet.

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A new report from Stratview Research projects the global satellite communications market will reach $50.86 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual rate of 9.2 percent.

The headline driver: rising demand for connectivity in remote and underserved areas. Satellite systems are filling a gap that ground-based infrastructure simply cannot reach — and that gap, by the numbers, is enormous.

A few details worth noting from the report:

Broadcast services are expected to hold the largest market share across the forecast period. The demand for high-quality, uninterrupted digital content delivery is a key factor, and satellite broadcasting has a reliable infrastructure edge over terrestrial networks in wide-area coverage.

On the consumer side, Direct-to-Home — or DTH — service is projected to remain the dominant application segment. That’s driven by strong subscriber demand for personalized, high-quality content delivered directly to households, including in markets where traditional cable or fiber infrastructure doesn’t reach.

The fastest-growing end-user category is the enterprise segment. Industries like mining, oil and gas, aviation, telecom and defense are all leaning harder on satellite communications for reliable connectivity in environments where no terrestrial option exists.

And geographically, North America is expected to be both the leading and fastest-growing region over the forecast period — driven by government investment, mature technology capabilities and the presence of major industry players. The integration of 5G, artificial intelligence and cloud-based satellite systems is accelerating real-time connectivity and expanding application areas. Defense communication and secure data transmission are also strengthening demand.

So — just shy of 51 billion dollars by 2032, growing at better than nine percent a year. Those are the numbers shaping where investment, competition and regulatory attention in this space are headed.

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Rocket Lab’s acquisition of German laser communications company Mynaric (mun-AHR-ic) has cleared a significant regulatory hurdle — and it brings a critical satellite technology in-house for one of the industry’s most aggressive vertical integrators.

Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has reviewed and approved the deal. The transaction is not yet closed, but regulatory approval in Germany is a major milestone.

So why does this matter?

Laser communications — also called optical inter-satellite links — represent a fundamental shift in how satellite constellations talk to each other and relay data to the ground. Compared to traditional radio frequency systems, laser comm offers higher data rates, better security, greater scalability and more efficient use of spectrum. The problem has been supply. For constellation operators trying to build at scale, laser comm terminals have been a persistent bottleneck — hard to source in volume, expensive, and often delayed.

Rocket Lab CEO Sir Peter Beck put it plainly. Quote: “Laser communications are a critical enabler for the constellations of today and tomorrow, and Rocket Lab is going to make them available at scale.” End quote.

The acquisition follows a pattern Rocket Lab has executed before. The company has a track record of identifying satellite subsystems that are only available in small quantities and at high prices — and then scaling production to serve the broader market. From solar panels to reaction wheels and star trackers — Rocket Lab has done this across multiple components. The pitch with Mynaric is the same playbook applied to optical terminals.

There’s already an existing relationship here. Mynaric is a subcontractor to Rocket Lab, providing CONDOR Mk3 optical terminals for Rocket Lab’s 1.3-billion-dollar prime contracts with the Space Development Agency — covering 36 satellites across the Transport Layer-Beta Tranche 2 and Tracking Layer Tranche 3 programs. Mynaric also supplies other SDA contracts, and the two companies share a significant customer overlap across commercial constellation operators and defense agencies.

After closing, Mynaric will remain headquartered in Munich, Germany — establishing Rocket Lab’s first European footprint and expanding its ability to serve German and broader European space programs.

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Planet Labs has announced what it’s calling a landmark technical achievement — and it’s a genuine one. The company successfully deployed and ran artificial intelligence object detection directly onboard its Pelican-4 satellite. No downlink. No waiting. The analysis happened in orbit.

Here’s the specifics: On March 25th, Planet’s Pelican-4 satellite was flying approximately 500 kilometers — about 310 miles — over Alice Springs, Australia. The satellite captured an image of an airport and then used its onboard NVIDIA Jetson Orin module to run an AI model that detected airplanes in the image — in moments.

Planet describes this as one of the first times an Earth imaging satellite has moved beyond simple data capture to actual onboard AI inference. The company calls this vision “Planetary Intelligence.”

Why does it matter? Because the traditional model in satellite Earth observation has been: capture an image, downlink it to a ground station, process it on the ground, then get the result to the customer. That pipeline can take hours. Moving AI to the edge — to the satellite itself — collapses that window to minutes.

Planet CEO Will Marshall added that the company is, quote, “moving AI from the internet into the physical realm — effectively connecting the ‘eyes’ of our satellites with an onboard ‘brain’ to create a nervous system for the planet.”

The practical applications here are immediate: disaster response, security monitoring, logistics — any scenario where minutes matter. The end-to-end process, from image capture to AI analysis to geo-rectified output, is designed to happen entirely in orbit, producing usable intelligence files — GeoTIFF and GeoJSON formats — without touching the ground.

Planet says this technology will scale across its Pelican and forthcoming Owl constellations, building toward what the company describes as a near-real-time global intelligence network.

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The FCC has a proposal on the table that commissioners themselves are calling “Weird Space Stuff” — and that name tells you something about how fast the space industry has moved beyond what regulators were originally built to handle.

At its March meeting, the FCC unanimously approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking — an NPRM — seeking public comment on a proposal to make additional spectrum available for the command and control of spacecraft that support emergent space operations but don’t use spectrum as part of any radiocommunications services provided to the public. Think commercial lunar missions. Think novel orbital platforms that don’t fit neatly into the old geostationary or LEO categories.

This week, I sat down with FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz to talk through the proposal — and to take a broader look at how the bureau is trying to keep pace with an industry that is moving faster than any regulatory framework was designed to handle.

Schwatz explained that the “Weird Space Stuff” NPRM and the agency’s broader “licensing assembly line” initiative aren’t separate ideas — they’re two parts of the same agenda.

“We as a government, we as Space Bureau, need to scale our operations to match the speed and innovation cycles of what we’re seeing in the industry. So we got to reflect that in government. And so the licensing assembly line is meant to do that, to provide greater speed, greater predictability, and greater flexibility for the industry so that they can get their licenses. We can still do our regulatory duties, but we can do it in a much, much faster and efficient way. And so that’s the part 100 licensing assembly line,” Schwarz said. “The weird space stuff is kind of another piece on this innovation agenda of making sure there’s enough spectrum. Now, where they come together is we did propose in our licensing assembly line something which we call a VTSS or a variable trajectory spacecraft system. And what we’re trying to do here is we’re trying to recognize that as these new activities that we’ve been talking about in this call, as these new activities get out there, we need to make sure that there’s a way to license them clearly.”

A variable trajectory spacecraft system — V-T-S-S — is essentially a new licensing category designed to accommodate missions that don’t follow a fixed, predictable orbit. The kind of mission profile that simply didn’t exist in meaningful numbers when the current rules were written, but that is showing up in application queues with increasing regularity.

The NPRM is open for public comment following publication in the Federal Register. The full interview is available now on The Journal of Space Commerce podcast — which you can find on on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Rumble, and many other multimedia platforms.

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The FCC Space Bureau chief described the demand for spectrum as, quote, “enormous” — driven by the enormous prosperity that commercial space activities promise to deliver. That spectrum scarcity is precisely what is driving the biggest consolidation story in the commercial satellite sector right now: Amazon’s reported nine-billion-dollar play for Globalstar. [Paywall]

On April 1st — and yes, it was April Fool’s Day, but this was no joke — Globalstar’s stock surged more than 24 percent to an 18-year high on reports that Amazon was in advanced talks to acquire the satellite operator for approximately nine billion dollars. The deal was first reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by Reuters.

This is not, at its core, a satellite story. It is a spectrum story.

Here’s why: Amazon’s LEO broadband constellation — known as Amazon Leo — had approximately 241 satellites in orbit as of early April, following a launch on April 4th that added 29 more spacecraft. Amazon officially operates the third-largest satellite system in orbit and has committed approximately 17 billion dollars in total constellation capital expenditure. But the company faces a hard deadline: the FCC has set a milestone requiring 1,616 satellites in orbit by July 30, 2026. As of right now, that’s roughly 1,375 more satellites in under four months. That gap is the number sitting on every serious Amazon Leo watcher’s desk.

And Amazon cannot buy its way out of that deployment challenge with the Globalstar deal. But what it can buy is something arguably more valuable on a longer timeline: Band n53 spectrum — spectrum that is already internationally coordinated, already commercially deployed, and already generating revenue through a landmark partnership with Apple. Every newer iPhone with emergency SOS capability runs on Globalstar’s spectrum. Amazon would not just be acquiring a satellite company. It would be acquiring a direct-to-device distribution channel already embedded in hundreds of millions of consumer devices.

The acquisition thesis has three legs. First, spectrum that cannot be manufactured or replicated on any short timeline — the FCC’s own spectrum abundance rulemaking proposes 20,000-plus megahertz of new allocations across four bands, but those are years from commercial deployment. Globalstar’s Band n53 is available today. Second, the Apple relationship — though that comes with significant complexity, since Apple holds roughly 20 percent of Globalstar’s equity and has presumptive change-of-control rights. And third, an existing, revenue-generating satellite network: Globalstar turned profitable in 2025 with approximately 273 million dollars in revenue — a real income statement, not a projection.

But there are real risks here, and they deserve the same attention as the strategic rationale.

First, the valuation gap. At nine billion dollars, Amazon is paying a significant premium. Stripped of the Apple contract, the spectrum strategic premium and the acquisition halo, Globalstar’s underlying asset base does not obviously justify that price. And the Apple contract terms — renewal conditions, exclusivity provisions, change-of-control rights — are not publicly disclosed.

Second, the regulatory timeline. Any acquisition of Globalstar requires FCC approval of the spectrum license transfer. As Jay Schwarz noted in our podcast conversation this week, the FCC is navigating competing priorities: promoting competition, supporting the space economy, and managing a regulatory calendar that does not bend to deal timelines. A review measured in quarters rather than weeks creates real execution risk for Amazon — particularly against that July 30th deployment milestone.

Third, the integration architecture problem. Globalstar’s existing constellation runs on fundamentally different orbital parameters, ground infrastructure and spectrum coordination frameworks than Amazon Leo’s purpose-built design. Companies that have navigated similar integration challenges have consistently reported that the timeline exceeded the deal timeline. For Amazon, which is already running hard against an FCC clock, that is a risk that doesn’t appear in any of the headline deal rationale.

One more dimension worth watching: SpaceX. MarketWatch reported on April 2nd that SpaceX may also have interest in Globalstar. If SpaceX is circling this asset, it’s not for the legacy constellation — it’s for Band n53 and the Apple pipeline. A competitive bid from SpaceX would not just raise the price. It would reprice the standalone spectrum valuation of every direct-to-device-adjacent asset in the satellite broadband sector.

The next hard data point arrives soon. AWS first-quarter 2026 earnings are expected in April or May. Watch the AWS segment reporting carefully. Any revenue language referencing connectivity services, satellite broadband or external commercial infrastructure licensing will be the earliest quantitative signal of Amazon Leo’s commercial traction — and the earliest read on what a nine-billion-dollar spectrum acquisition might actually be worth.

You can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the “In Depth” tab. Premium articles this week include a look at one critical factor defining commercial space economics through 2028, and yes Starship is involved, what the 30-moon-landing target actually signals for the Commercial Lunar Payload industry, and why the headline figure of NASA’s DOGE contract cancellations understates the real exposure.

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Here’s a number that would have seemed like science fiction three years ago — one-hundred-and-seventy million dollars for a Series A round. That’s what Starcloud just pulled in — and they plan to use it to put data centers in orbit.

The company closed a $170 million Series A at a $1.1 billion valuation — making it a unicorn just seventeen months after its Y Combinator demo day. According to Starcloud, that makes it the fastest unicorn in Y Combinator history. The round is also more than double the size of the next largest YC Series A, bringing the company’s total capital raised to $200 million.

So what does Starcloud actually do? CEO Philip Johnston framed it this way — and I’m quoting here — “The AI revolution is colliding with the physical limits of our terrestrial energy grid. We are quickly running out of places to build new energy projects for data centers on Earth.”

His answer? Go up. Starcloud is building data centers in low Earth orbit, where solar energy is effectively unlimited and the permitting headaches that can add five years to an earthbound data center project simply don’t exist.

And they’re not just talking about it. With only $3 million in pre-seed funding, the company designed, built, and launched its first satellite — Starcloud-1 — in 21 months. That mission flew the first NVIDIA H100 GPU to orbit, performed the first orbital AI training run, and ran a version of Gemini — the Google AI model — from space. That’s a serious set of technical milestones for a company that didn’t exist two years ago.

The round was co-led by Benchmark and EQT — that’s the world’s second-largest private equity firm, with more than 100 billion dollars in assets under management and a portfolio of more than 70 data centers on the ground.

Later this year, Starcloud-2 launches — featuring what the company calls the largest commercial deployable radiator ever sent to space, and 100 times the power generation of Starcloud-1. The company says it will be its first satellite running commercial workloads for paying customers.

Bottom line: orbital AI compute is no longer a think-piece concept. Starcloud is building it, and some of the biggest names in venture and infrastructure just bet $170 million that it’s real.

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Sidus Space reported its full-year 2025 financial results this week, and there are two stories inside those numbers.

First, the challenging headline: revenue came in at approximately $3.4 million for the year — that’s a decline of about 28 percent compared to 2024. Cost of revenue increased 48 percent to roughly $9.1 million, driven largely by higher depreciation tied to the company’s expanding satellite fleet. Net loss for the year totaled $29.5 million, up from $17.5 million in 2024 — and that includes a $4.5 million non-cash impairment charge related to LizzieSat-1.

On the company earnings call posted online, CEO and founder Carol Craig described 2025 as a, quote, “pivotal year” — framing the losses as investment, not failure. The company launched LizzieSat-3 in March of last year, demonstrated on-orbit AI processing through its Orlaith AI ecosystem, and validated sub-5-meter imagery resolution with a partner payload.

“An important part of our strategy is that our satellites are company-owned and company-funded, with multiple customers contributing revenue before and after launch. Unlike others that may depend primarily on government contracts to finance and build their satellites, we made a deliberate decision to create a Sidus-owned platform, including the underlying intellectual property that can support commercial, civil space, and defense customers on a single satellite,” Craig said during the company earnings call. “This dual-use multi-mission model creates diversified revenue streams, broadens customer opportunities, and supports a more resilient business model in an increasingly dynamic geopolitical environment. Another important differentiator is that we intentionally designed our satellites to serve as both development and production platforms. From the beginning, our goal was to build a robust, redundant satellite architecture capable of testing and maturing technologies while simultaneously supporting customer missions.”

But here’s the other story: the balance sheet. As of December 31st, Sidus had $43.2 million in cash — up from $15.7 million at the end of 2024. That’s a $27.5 million increase, driven by equity capital raises in the back half of last year. Working capital jumped from $8 million to nearly $35.7 million.

They also expanded their contract portfolio significantly. Among the highlights — a ten-year IDIQ contract under the Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD program, which carries a potential ceiling of $151 billion. They expanded their manufacturing agreement with Lonestar Data Holdings for lunar satellite work to $120 million total contract value. And post-year-end, they announced that Maris-Tech’s AI-based edge computing payload is scheduled to fly on a Sidus mission in Q4 of this year.

The company now holds 15 issued patents and has designs underway for multiple next-generation platforms, including a cislunar and lunar satellite called LunarLizzie — an 800-plus kilogram platform.

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From Florida’s Space Coast to Silicon Valley — Momentus Space has completed its move into a new 61,100-square-foot research, development, and manufacturing facility in San Jose, California.

The headline number here is the clean room. Momentus has gone from 4,500 square feet of clean room manufacturing to 16,000 square feet — nearly four times the capacity. The new facility also includes a machine shop, a dedicated mission operations center for monitoring and controlling spacecraft in orbit, and — notably — it comes with lower monthly operating costs than the company’s previous lease.

CEO John Rood said the move positions Momentus to meet rising demand across the national security and commercial space sectors. The company has specifically called out Golden Dome and the MDA SHIELD program as programs it intends to support from the new facility.

The San Jose location also puts Momentus closer to its supply chain, key industry partners, and the talent base in the Silicon Valley ecosystem — which matters when you’re scaling manufacturing operations.

Momentus has had a complicated few years on the public markets, but this move signals a company focused on operational scale and execution. More clean room, lower overhead, and a mission control capability under one roof. That’s a meaningful infrastructure upgrade.

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For the first time in more than fifty years, human beings are flying to the Moon.

NASA’s SLS rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday evening carrying four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft, which the crew has named “Integrity.” The crew includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch — and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

The main event comes tomorrow in the form of a planned multi-hour lunar flyby. The crew will photograph and observe parts of the Moon’s far side that have never been seen by human eyes in person. Total mission duration is approximately ten days, ending with a Pacific Ocean splashdown.

This mission is not a lunar landing — it is a crewed test flight. But the objectives are foundational: validate life support systems with crew aboard, test Orion’s handling in deep space, and lay the groundwork for future surface missions.

The commercial space implications here are significant. A sustained crewed lunar presence — which is the stated goal of the broader Artemis program — will require commercial logistics, commercial habitation, commercial surface systems, and commercial data services. What’s happening in orbit right now is the beginning of that pipeline.

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From the Moon to the International Space Station — this next story is about a robotics startup with big ambitions and a mission manager with deep roots.

Icarus Robotics, a New York City-based company co-founded by Ethan Barajas and Jamie Palmer, has awarded a contract to Voyager Technologies to support the in-orbit demonstration of its free-flying robotics platform — called Joyride. The demonstration is targeted for early 2027 aboard a space station.

Under the agreement, Voyager will handle payload integration, safety certification, launch coordination, and real-time mission execution support. That’s what Voyager calls “mission management as a service” — and with more than 1,400 missions managed across its career supporting the ISS, the company has a well-established track record for getting payloads to orbit and operating them when they get there.

Voyager president Matt Magaña called the Icarus contract exactly the kind of work the service was designed for — helping companies, quote, “move from ideas to proven flight heritage.”

But what makes this story a little more than a straightforward contract announcement is the personal connection. Icarus co-founder Barajas participated in Voyager’s NASA HUNCH program as a high school student — a program that gives students hands-on experience building hardware for the space station. That early exposure to spaceflight shaped his path. Now his robotics company is coming back to the station — this time as a customer.

The Joyride platform is designed for autonomous navigation and operations inside and around space stations — working in environments where human presence is difficult or costly. As commercial stations like Starlab move toward operations, the demand for capable autonomous robotics platforms in orbit is only going to grow. Icarus is early, but this demonstration could be a meaningful step toward a very large market.

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Coming up this week on The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast, I talk with FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwartz about the mission of the Space Bureau and the recently approved Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on spectrum for “Weird Space Stuff”.

Schwartz explained that the FCC’s spectrum licensing dance card has been growing exponentially, and for more exotic missions.

“There’s also been a significant change in the types of applications in terms of the complexity that we’ve gotten. So a decade ago, about 80% of the applications were geostationary applications, relatively straightforward to license. And typically you’re dealing with just one satellite, right? What we’re seeing today is we’re seeing that flipped and something on the order of about 80% are your NGSO or your LEO constellations,” Schwartz said. “So more complex, larger, obviously, in terms of the number of satellites, more complex interference environments. And then actually, we’re also getting a number of things, we might touch on this a little bit later, that don’t even fall into that traditional NGSO or GSO category. So we’ve licensed a few commercial lunar missions, for instance, and I think we’ll continue to see more and more of those type of emerging space activities.”

Later this month, a deep dive on the recent Space Supply Chain report with Steve Jordan Tomaszewski and Doug Anderson ... on the Journal of Space Commerce Podcast.

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In depth this week, there may be no single event with more potential consequence for the commercial space industry in 2026 than what’s coming out SpaceX — and it has nothing to do with a rocket launch. (Paywall)

SpaceX is reportedly preparing to file a confidential IPO prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, targeting a June 2026 stock listing. And the valuation being attached to this offering? One point seven five trillion dollars — with a raise target above $75 billion.

Let that number sink in. Seventy-five billion dollars raised in a single public offering would nearly triple the $29.4 billion raised by Saudi Aramco in 2019 — the previous record for the largest public offering in history.

At $1.75 trillion, SpaceX would sit above every company in the S&P 500 except Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. That means the moment it lists, it becomes one of the most valuable companies in the world — full stop.

So how did we get here? The valuation isn’t just about rockets. SpaceX has been building value across multiple vectors simultaneously. There’s the launch business — a near-monopoly on heavy lift capability. There’s Starlink — a global satellite internet constellation with a growing subscriber base across consumer, maritime, enterprise, and government segments. There’s a substantial government contract portfolio spanning NASA, the Space Force, and the NRO. And then, as of February of this year, there’s the wild card: SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with xAI — Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company — creating what the market is now pricing as an AI-plus-space platform at a combined level that justified pushing the pre-IPO valuation from roughly $1.25 trillion after the merger to the current $1.75 trillion target.

The implied revenue multiple here — at roughly 113 times projected 2025 revenues — is well above any comparable public space company. Rocket Lab, for context, trades at 15 to 20 times forward revenue.

Now let’s talk about what this means for the rest of the sector — because there are three distinct dynamics at work here, and every investor in commercial space needs to understand all three.

The first is the capital absorption problem. A $75 billion raise is not a typical IPO. It will pull from the same investor pool that currently holds Rocket Lab, AST SpaceMobile, Intuitive Machines, Voyager Technologies, and every other public space name. Institutional allocators who want space exposure may simply shift that allocation into a more liquid, better-researched SpaceX position. Smaller names — particularly those whose business lines overlap most directly with SpaceX — face meaningful crowding-out risk during the second quarter of this year as attention and capital concentrate ahead of the listing.

There’s an offsetting argument: SpaceX’s roadshow may bring generalist institutional investors into the sector for the first time, expanding the total pool of capital available to space companies over the medium term. The xAI angle in particular will draw AI and technology investors who might never have engaged with aerospace. But in the short term, the bandwidth compression effect is real.

The second is the benchmark dislocation problem. Once SpaceX trades publicly with audited financials, every investment committee in the world has a reference point it didn’t have before. That’s a double-edged sword. Companies with genuinely differentiated models — Rocket Lab’s vertical integration, AST SpaceMobile’s direct-to-device architecture, Intuitive Machines’ lunar services play — should benefit from clarified differentiation. The risk is concentrated in companies whose revenue base overlaps with SpaceX in launch services or satellite manufacturing. And for pre-IPO companies like Voyager Technologies and Karman Holdings — both of which have confidential IPO filings expected this year — every valuation conversation will now happen in the shadow of that $1.75 trillion benchmark.

The third dynamic is actually positive for the broader sector — and it’s the one that doesn’t get talked about enough. The SpaceX S-1 will be the most consequential piece of financial disclosure the commercial space industry has ever produced. For the first time, investors will see audited Starlink subscriber counts and revenue-per-user figures. They’ll see SpaceX’s defense revenue broken out — contracts with the Space Force, NRO, NASA — and they’ll see the actual cost structure behind Falcon 9 and Starship launches. That information doesn’t just price SpaceX. It reprices the entire sector, with real data instead of estimates.

Defense-aligned space companies in particular may benefit from the investor education effect. If SpaceX’s government revenue proves to be as large and as recurring as the market expects — and the USSF budget alone is running at roughly $40 billion for FY2026 — it validates the investment thesis for every company in the sector that carries government contracts as a primary revenue driver.

The S-1, under standard SEC timelines, is expected to become public in late May or early June. From that moment, the commercial space industry will be playing in a fundamentally different information environment.

This is not just the biggest IPO in space history. It is, potentially, the biggest public offering in the history of global capital markets. And it’s happening right now.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Capital and Investment tab. Other premium articles this week include a look at the ramifications of the Gateway program pause on the space supply chain, and the hidden chokepoints in the “Golden Dome”.

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• Which Side of the Line Are You On? (Paywall)

NASA is not tiptoeing into the future. It is sprinting, and using nuclear power.

NASA this week unveiled a sweeping set of initiatives at its recent “Ignition” event, doubling down on its ambitions to return Americans to the Moon — and this time, to stay.​

At the heart of the announcement is an accelerated Artemis program. NASA aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2027, with missions launching at least once a year after that, and eventually every six months. But this isn’t just about planting a flag. NASA is laying out a three-phase roadmap to build a permanent Moon base — starting with robotic deliveries and technology tests, moving toward semi-habitable infrastructure supported by international partners like Japan, Italy, and Canada, and ultimately establishing a continuous human presence on the lunar surface.

​Administrator Jared Isaacman explained some of the steps the agency is taking to meet those goals.

“We are standardizing the SLS architecture with the Centaur 5 upper stage. We’re rebuilding and focusing expertise on ML1 pad turnaround and establishing the muscle memory required to support a higher launch cadence. The programs we left behind in this effort were not success stories. NASA takes ownership for the shortcomings, but contributing billions more and time that we do not have was not a pathway to success,” Isaacman said. “On that note, I welcome the interest from industry to make use of these capabilities in furtherance of our shared priorities. As we move forward, we intend to launch Artemis 3 in 2027 to test the integrated operations of Orion and one or both lunar landers in Earth orbit. What we learn from that mission will ideally give us the confidence to begin lunar landing attempts starting with Artemis 4 in 2028.”

​In low Earth orbit, NASA is rethinking the future of the International Space Station. Rather than abruptly handing operations over to private companies, the agency is exploring a phased transition — potentially attaching a government-owned module to the ISS, then gradually spinning off commercial stations — all to avoid any gap in America’s presence in orbit.

​On the science front, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch as early as this fall, and NASA is targeting up to 30 robotic lunar landings beginning in 2027.

​But perhaps the boldest announcement is this: NASA will launch Space Reactor-1 Freedom — the world’s first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft — to Mars before the end of 2028, marking a historic leap in deep-space propulsion.

​Steve Sinacore is NASA’s program executive for Fission Surface Power.

“Nuclear power also unlocks deep space. Past Jupiter, the sun is just another star. Solar cell efficiency drops to 4% at Jupiter, requiring extremely large solar panels, and it’s effectively 0 beyond that. And for deep space missions, chemical propulsion cannot escape its own mass fraction. These are not engineering problems. They are physics constraints, and nuclear power is the answer,” Sinacore said. “Additionally, nuclear-powered electric propulsion spacecraft will move cargo in space like railroads move freight on Earth, with incredibly high efficiency compared to chemical propulsion. And nuclear also brings more innovation to the game, allowing for higher power, more thrust, and eventually exotic propulsion concepts that will open up the art of the possible for future exploration missions.”

​To support all of this, NASA says it’s investing heavily in its workforce — converting contractor roles to civil service positions and opening new pathways for early-career talent.

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We turn now to the quarterly earnings front, where several commercial space companies wrapped up 2025 with results that tell very different stories — but point toward the same direction: growth.

Start with York Space Systems. The Denver-based company closed 2025 with revenue up 52 percent to $386 million, powered largely by work on Space Development Agency Transport Layer Tranche 2 contracts. Gross margin expanded by nearly seven percentage points to 19-and-a-half percent, lifting gross profit 133 percent. York’s net loss is narrowing — down 15 percent to $84.5 million — and adjusted EBITDA losses shrank 81 percent to just $8.3 million.

​CEO Dirk Wallinger called 2025 the year York defined what a modern mission prime looks like. The company delivered 21 Tranche 1 Transport Layer satellites — the first prime to complete an on-orbit delivery under that program — and turned around the Dragoon mission from contract to orbit in just seven months. That is roughly 75 percent faster than the traditional 30-month timeline.

York completed its IPO in January, raising more than $580 million in net proceeds. Combined with existing liquidity, the company entered 2026 with nearly $900 million available. Management is guiding for full-year 2026 revenue of $545 to $595 million — and says more than 70 percent of the midpoint is already covered by existing backlog.

​Now to Planet Labs. The Earth imaging company posted record results for its most recent fiscal year. Planet CEO Will Marshall outlined the top line numbers to open his earnings call.

“We generated a record $308 million in revenue, representing approximately 26% year-over-year growth. Non-GAAP gross margin was 59% for the year. Adjusted EBITDA profit came in at $15.5 million, and free cash flow was $53 million, representing our first full fiscal year of non-GAAP profitability, an excellent milestone for the team as we strike a balance between profit and growth,” he said. “Q4 was also a record for revenue, representing 41% year-over-year growth and our fifth consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA profitability. For the second sequential quarter, we achieved Rule of 40, which is our revenue growth plus adjusted EBITDA margin. And on an annual basis, we achieved Rule of 30, a full year earlier than we anticipated. “

​Fourth-quarter revenue came in at $86.8 million — a 41 percent jump year over year.

The headline GAAP losses look severe — a full-year net loss of nearly $247 million — but most of that stems from non-cash accounting charges tied to warrant revaluations connected to a rising share price. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was a positive $15.5 million, a sharp swing from a loss of more than $10 million the year before.

Planet ended the year with a backlog of more than $900 million — 79 percent growth year over year — and nearly $640 million in cash.

​And then there’s Spire Global, which reported full-year 2025 revenue of $71.6 million — right at the midpoint of its guidance — but those numbers require context. Spire sold its maritime division in April 2025, which pulled down the top-line comparison. Strip out the maritime business, and revenue actually grew 44 percent in the fourth quarter.

Spire CEO Theresa Condor explained some of the dynamics that led to these results.

“The global demand environment for space-based intelligence has fundamentally shifted in SPIRE’s favor, and we are uniquely positioned to capture it. Three forces are converging. First, defense and intelligence spending on space is surging, not just in the United States, where the administration has targeted a $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal year 2027,” she said, “but across Europe, where nations are making historic investments in strategic autonomy. Second, civil agencies like NOAA and NASA are shifting decisively toward commercial data procurement, with NOAA projecting billions of dollars in commercial weather data purchases over the next decade. And third, commercial industries from agriculture to aviation are adopting space-based intelligence at an accelerating pace. driven by AI and the operational advantages our data provides.”

​The company narrowed its net loss nearly in half year over year in Q4, and ended the year with more than $81 million in cash with no debt. Looking ahead, Spire is projecting full-year 2026 revenue — excluding maritime — of between $71 and $81 million, representing 41 to 61 percent growth over its remaining core business.

The space industry has spent years building better eyes. Slingshot Aerospace says it’s time to build a better brain.

The Austin-based company is introducing a framework it calls Space Operations Intelligence and Autonomy — or SOIA — which it describes as a new market category designed to move the industry beyond simply observing the space domain toward actively operating within it.

I talked with Slingshot CEO Tim Solms about the development and what it means for Space Domain Awareness.

(See audio transcript)

Tim Solms is the CEO of Slingshot Aerospace

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The Federal Communications Commission has voted to start a proceeding to bring greater spectrum abundance to cutting-edge, emergent ventures in space, namely supporting telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) for on-the-horizon endeavors like orbital laboratories, satellite repairs, and private inhabitable spacecraft. The new “Weird Space Stuff” proceeding looks to address shortages of available, reliable spectrum for such operations. The Commission will seek comment on ways to expand access, modernize the FCC’s rules, and give America’s space activities the predictable spectrum environment they need to thrive.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) looks to find ways to use market-based principles to see spectrum resources put to more intensive use in the service of the space economy. The NPRM seeks to clarify and expand the FCC’s traditional regulatory classifications so that emergent operations have more predictable spectrum access. The proceeding will also explore new spectrum bands that could support new use cases on a dedicated basis to provide a clear, reliable, and expeditious path to support the groundbreaking technologies and services that companies are developing in space.

In their March meeting, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said that everything in space needs spectrum.

“Spectrum provides the necessary link for safety and control operations, or what we call TT&C. Unfortunately, next-gen missions have been constrained by a shortage of predictable commercial spectrum for this type of operation. It’s proven to be a real limit on the ability to launch and deploy unconventional services. Today, we tackled that challenge head on,” Carr said. “We propose to clarify for good when cutting-edge missions can use commercial spectrum for TTNC. We explore market-based approaches that can put existing spectrum bands to more intensive use for these purposes. And we examine new spectrum bands that could support cutting-edge missions on a dedicated basis. America’s spectrum companies, even the weird ones and the cool ones, need plentiful access to spectrum. With today’s action, we continue our spectrum abundance agenda to support our builders in space.”

We’ll explore this topic more in depth on an upcoming edition of The Journal of Space Commerce podcast with FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwartz.

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In Depth this week — a growing disconnect between what advanced manufacturing shops can build and what aerospace primes are legally allowed to buy from them is emerging as one of the most significant bottlenecks in commercial space. (Paywall)

This matters if you are anywhere in the space supply chain.

​Three recent developments have brought the issue into sharp focus. In January, spacecraft company Momentus and metal 3-D printing firm Velo3D announced flight testing of an additively manufactured fuel tank aboard Momentus’s Vigoride-7 orbital vehicle — a supply chain move as much as a technology milestone. Last August, NASA and industrial 3-D printing company EOS signed a formal agreement to launch a hands-on training program for manufacturers seeking to qualify hardware under NASA flight standards. And this month, industry consortium America Makes issued a funding call specifically aimed at developing manufacturers capable of meeting prime contractor quality requirements.

​Taken together, the signals point to a system under pressure. To win a spot on a prime contractor’s approved supplier list, an additive manufacturing shop must navigate four layers of requirements — federal standards, mandatory aerospace quality certifications, prime-specific procurement rules, and a formal qualification process that can stretch well beyond a year. Most shops stall somewhere in the middle.

​The consequences are real. Single-source dependence on legacy suppliers remains common across critical space hardware categories. Standards bodies are still catching up to hardware that’s already flying. And quality flow-down requirements in supplier contracts from companies like Redwire and L3Harris mean that gaps anywhere in a shop’s supply chain can surface — often at the worst possible moment.

​The stakes are climbing fast. Department of War spending on additive manufacturing is projected to grow from roughly 800 million dollars in 2024 to 2-point-6 billion dollars by 2030. Programs including the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 2 satellite constellation and NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations initiative are building procurement pipelines that will require flight-qualified suppliers — and qualification timelines don’t compress just because a program schedule demands it.

​Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab. Other premium articles this week include how AT&T and Verizon may be funding their own displacement, how to build trust with terrestrial industries that don’t speak space, and what dual-use space funds like NATO’s Innovation Fund actually cost institutional limited partners.

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The Fork in the Cap Table (Paywall)

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America’s space industry is booming — but the supply chain keeping it aloft is buckling under the pressure.

A new report from the Aerospace Industries Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers is sounding the alarm: the U.S. space industrial base was built for a different era, and it’s struggling to keep pace with explosive demand.

Consider this — more than 3,400 U.S. space objects were launched in 2025 alone, nearly ten times the volume seen back in 2019. But the factories, suppliers, and testing facilities needed to sustain that growth? They haven’t scaled with it.

The report finds that many critical components are supported by just three or fewer qualified domestic suppliers — and those suppliers are competing against larger industries for the same limited parts. The result: delays across major programs, rising costs, and fragility across the entire chain. AIA Vice President for Space Steven Jordan Tomaszewski said during a webinar discussing the report that there is no silver bullet for solving the supply chain issues.

“It is a number of consistent lines of effort that a lot of times require government and industry to work together on. And not just, but there are some things industry can do on their own, certain things that government can do to have better visibility and to kind of work and help make strategic investments at time or modify policies and regulations,” Tomaszewski said. “So it’s not going to be a fully comprehensive list of all the things that we can do, but hopefully this will be a good roll up for folks just to understand where those pain points are, but then also how we can fix it working together.”

Budget instability and inconsistent government demand signals are also discouraging the private investment needed to expand capacity. Smaller firms are being squeezed by regulatory and cybersecurity burdens they can barely afford to meet.

The fix, according to the report, requires action on multiple fronts — better coordination between government and industry on long-term planning, easing outdated qualification requirements, expanding shared testing infrastructure, and creating financial incentives to bring more suppliers online. Tomaszewski said that 2026 will be the ‘year of the supply chain’

“There’s a lot of government and commercial interest of looking at what the problems are and how do we kind of make things better, which is great. And I think this study really is getting out to some of those specifics,” he said. “What’s that next level down? Okay, we can’t scale up production because these are kind of some of the bottlenecks right now. And then, you know, how do we start getting into the implementation phase of some of these recommendations?”

Eric Fanning, AIA president and CEO said that a resilient space supply chain isn’t optional — it’s a national imperative. The question now is whether Washington and the industry will act before today’s bottlenecks become tomorrow’s crisis.

Steve Tomaszaewski is scheduled to be a guest on a future episode of The Journal of Space Commerce podcast.

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The Federal Aviation Administration has now fully consolidated commercial launch and reentry licensing under Part 450, retiring four older rule sets and moving operators onto a single performance-based framework. The agency’s aim is fewer duplicative approvals, more flexibility in how companies demonstrate safety, and less administrative burden on both industry and government.

Part 450 allows a single license to cover multiple vehicle configurations, different mission profiles and operations from multiple launch and reentry sites all under one authorization, rather than a patchwork of separate approvals. Operators like Blue Origin, Firefly, SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and United Launch Alliance have now transitioned existing licenses ahead of a March 2026 deadline.

For launch providers, the shift has two big consequences. First, it can materially shorten the time from contract signature to first launch, assuming internal teams can keep pace with more compressed data requests from the FAA. Second, it gives operators more room to iterate on vehicles and mission profiles without going back to square one on licensing every time they tweak a configuration.

For satellite operators and investors, the message is that regulatory friction is less likely to be the pacing item than hardware and integration. If launch licensing uncertainty had been a reason to hold back on certain business models, this rule set removes at least part of that excuse.

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York Space Systems has agreed to acquire Orbion Space Technology, a Michigan-based manufacturer of Hall-effect electric propulsion systems designed for constellation-scale missions. Orbion’s Aurora thrusters are already flying on York-built spacecraft, including platforms that support U.S. national security missions.

On the surface, it is a classic supply-chain move: lock in a critical vendor by bringing it in-house.

The deal reduces York’s exposure to external propulsion delays at the very moment that demand for maneuverable LEO spacecraft is accelerating.

Orbion will operate as a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary, continuing to serve a broader set of customers while giving York preferred access and tighter design integration.

But the timing matters. The acquisition comes only weeks after York’s initial public offering, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars and positioned the company more explicitly as a Tier 1 defense and commercial prime. Analysts project rapid revenue growth, and integrating propulsion directly into York’s platform roadmap is a way to support that scale without getting trapped in the same long lead times that are hitting other primes.

For the rest of the ecosystem, this is part of a broader pattern. Prime contractors are using balance-sheet capital to secure scarce capabilities, from propulsion to optics. Smaller operators that once counted on shared suppliers may now find those vendors sitting behind a prime’s firewall or booked out by long-term framework agreements.

Propulsion capacity is migrating from open market to captive asset faster than many business plans assumed. That makes early, durable relationships with remaining independent suppliers more important—and raises the odds that additional consolidation is on the way.

​

Orbit is not just getting crowded with spacecraft—it is getting cluttered with retired hardware. That is opening the door for orbital debris removal as a commercial service, not just a policy talking point.

Astroscale’s planned ELSA‑M in‑orbit demonstration is a good example. Under a new launch agreement with Isar Aerospace, Astroscale will fly a roughly 520‑kilogram servicer designed to rendezvous with and remove an end‑of‑life Eutelsat OneWeb satellite. The mission is majority self‑funded, with additional backing from the UK Space Agency through ESA’s ARTES program as part of the Sunrise public–private partnership with Eutelsat.

Isar will launch ELSA‑M on its Spectrum vehicle from a dedicated pad at Andøya Space in Norway, showcasing both launch flexibility and the orbital precision needed for close‑proximity operations. Spectrum is designed, built, and operated in‑house with a high degree of automation, giving Isar a path to scale production as demand for targeted missions—including debris removal—grows.

For Astroscale, ELSA‑M is the next step on a roadmap that includes earlier missions like ELSA‑d and ADRAS‑J, which demonstrated key skills such as safe approaches, robust relative navigation, and controlled operations near uncooperative objects. ELSA‑M aims to become the world’s first commercial end‑of‑life service for “prepared” satellites, meaning spacecraft designed with interfaces that support docking and removal.

From a space‑commerce standpoint, several points matter:

Debris removal is moving from technology demo to revenue‑generating service tied directly to operators’ lifecycle plans. Launch providers see this as a growth market, building manifest flexibility and orbital targeting into their value proposition for rendezvous missions, and regulators and insurers are watching closely, because routine end‑of‑life services could eventually influence licensing terms, collision‑risk assessments, and premiums for high‑value constellations.

The practical question is whether your satellites are being designed as “customers” for this emerging service layer. If interfaces and end‑of‑life concepts are not being baked into current programs, you could be closing off future options to mitigate debris risk and differentiate on sustainability.

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There are start-ups looking to rethink what “infrastructure” means in orbit, and one of the more speculative ideas gaining attention is the concept of delivering sunlight to shaded or energy-constrained locations on Earth using space-based reflectors or power systems. Among those companies is Mantis Space, which just emerged from stealth with an oversubscribed seed round of more than $10 million. The concept is to place controllable platforms in orbit that can redirect solar energy on demand, extending productive hours for agriculture, industrial operations, or disaster response.

For now, it is early-stage and high-risk.

These concepts run into tough questions around launch and deployment costs, even under a streamlined licensing regime, precision station-keeping and attitude control to keep beams or reflections where they are supposed to be and regulatory and public acceptance, given concerns about light pollution, safety, and potential dual-use implications

But from a supply-chain standpoint, they point in a consistent direction. More complex, persistent infrastructure in orbit increases demand for high-efficiency propulsion to maintain precise orbits, robust optical systems to control and monitor power delivery and reliable, radiation-hardened electronics to manage autonomy at scale.

Those are the same categories already showing stress in today’s supply chain surveys. If even a fraction of these orbital power and sunlight concepts move from pitch deck to deployment, they will amplify the competition for components that defense and commercial operators already struggle to secure.

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In Depth this week, the “orbital optical gap” that sits between what next‑generation constellations will need from their optical components, and what the current supplier base can realistically deliver from Earth. (Paywall)

Most procurement teams keep a tidy list of approved optical vendors—domestic specialists, a few European houses, and lead times that look uncomfortable but accepted. What almost none of those lists include is an orbital address, even as governments and defense agencies start placing directional bets on optical manufacturing in microgravity.

In February, the UK Space Agency awarded about 295,000 pounds to British start‑up OrbiSky to design a payload for producing ZBLAN fluoride glass optical fiber in low Earth orbit. That follows ESA’s decision to name ZBLAN a priority in its Advanced Materials and In‑Orbit Manufacturing program, Varda Space Industries returning a U.S. Navy research payload on its W‑5 mission, and the Air Force Research Laboratory’s continued work with Redwire on in‑space manufacturing. Taken together, those moves signal that orbital optical production is no longer a lab curiosity—it is becoming a capability governments expect to use.

The physics are what make this different.

ZBLAN fiber can, in theory, deliver 10 to 100 times lower signal loss than silica over key portions of the spectrum, which is a system‑level advantage for high‑bandwidth optical intersatellite links. On Earth, gravity-driven convection and sedimentation create microcrystals during fiber drawing, scattering light and destroying that performance; experiments dating back to NASA parabolic flights in the 1990s showed that even brief microgravity reduces crystal formation, and sustained orbit is where ZBLAN can approach its theoretical best. That means terrestrial process improvement cannot fully substitute for making this material in space.

So what does the orbital optical supply chain actually look like today?

The ISS model: Redwire, through its Enhanced In‑Space Manufacturing facility, has been producing optical crystals and fiber commercially on the International Space Station and reported the first sale of a space‑manufactured optical crystal in 2022. Flawless Photonics has run an autonomous ZBLAN platform on ISS, delivering nearly 12 kilometers of fiber to the University of Adelaide by early 2025, while earlier players like Physical Optics and FOMS demonstrated precursor hardware.

The free‑flyer model: Varda’s W‑series spacecraft use Rocket Lab’s Photon bus and a reentry capsule to process materials in orbit and bring them home, with the W‑5 mission under AFRL’s Prometheus program proving both cadence and reentry for defense customers ahead of crystal‑manufacturing payloads. Varda has also signed a joint development deal with United Semiconductors for orbital crystal production, signaling early commercial demand.

New entrants: OrbiSky’s UKSA‑funded SkyYield study, ESA’s ZBLAN prioritization, and Flawless Photonics’ expansion into Luxembourg all point to a growing European footprint, with implications for ITAR, export controls, and industrial policy.

The problem is scale and timing. Current orbital optical production is measured in kilograms per mission and kilometers of fiber per run, while large constellations are measured in thousands of components across multi‑year builds. ISS itself is on track for decommissioning around 2030, and the commercial LEO destinations meant to replace it do not yet have firm construction and operations timelines, leaving a transition risk for ISS‑dependent providers.​

Then there is the qualification gap. No major prime has publicly documented a supplier‑qualification process for in‑space‑manufactured optical components, and no government requirement set yet treats orbital manufacturing as a recognized production path for flight hardware. AFRL’s Prometheus program offers a partial pathway, but it is focused on reentry science and defense materials, not bulk component supply for broadband constellations.

For investors, this looks like a pre‑institutional market: verified government demand, early commercial customers, and no settled capital framework. Redwire reports a growing backlog including advanced manufacturing work, Varda is flying multiple missions under AFRL, and European agencies are backing multiple ZBLAN players with modest but strategic contracts. The satellite manufacturing market, meanwhile, is projected to expand sharply through the early 2030s, with demand for high‑performance optics tracking the shift to optical intersatellite links.

The orbital optical gap is real, the companies working to close it are already flying hardware, and the procurement window for programs that will eventually need their output is opening now.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab. Other premium articles this week include an analysis of what the Stargaze from SpaceX signals for the future of orbital governance, and the five component sub-tiers that could define smallsat’s $30 billion decade.

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• What the ISS Supply Chain Knows That Your CLD Proposal Doesn’t (Paywall)
  
  

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is taking aim at one of the least-talked-about chokepoints in the commercial space industry — spectrum.

On Wednesday, Carr shared a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with his fellow commissioners. If it clears a full Commission vote at the agency’s March monthly meeting, the FCC would open a formal proceeding to address what it calls an acute spectrum shortage for emergent space operations — things like orbital laboratories, satellite repair missions, and private habitable spacecraft.

The issue comes down to telemetry, tracking, and command — the radio signals that let operators control spacecraft in orbit. Even satellites that don’t offer public communications services need reliable access to that spectrum. Right now, the FCC says American innovators are facing a crunch that could delay, or in some cases prevent, the growth of domestic space technologies.

The proposed rulemaking would move in two directions. First, the FCC wants to clarify its existing rules so that cutting-edge space operations have more predictable access to the spectrum they already use. Second, it wants to identify entirely new spectrum bands dedicated to these emerging use cases — giving companies a clear, reliable path to support the technologies they’re developing.

Carr called the proposal the first step toward the spectrum abundance needed to give American space activities a predictable operating environment. It’s worth noting the FCC has already been active on this front. Earlier this year, the Commission launched a separate proceeding to release up to 20,000 megahertz of spectrum for high-speed broadband services from low-Earth orbit constellations, and it has begun a comprehensive review of its overall space licensing framework.

The bottom line: spectrum may not be the flashiest topic in commercial space, but for the companies actually trying to operate there, it is foundational. Watch for the Commission vote later this month.

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Voyager Technologies this week reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 — and paired that earnings release with a significant strategic investment that says a lot about where the company is heading.

On the financial side, Voyager delivered net sales of $46.7 million in the fourth quarter, a 24% increase year over year. For the full year, the company posted $166.4 million in net sales — up 15% from 2024. The standout number, though, is backlog. Voyager ended 2025 with total backlog of $265.6 million, a 33% increase over the prior year. That’s a record for the company, and it’s driving a bump in 2026 guidance — Voyager now expects full-year revenue between $225 million and $255 million, which would represent year-over-year growth of 35% to 53%.

The company’s Defense and National Security segment drove much of the momentum, with a 63% increase in fourth quarter sales to $35.7 million, led in part by progress on the Next Generation Interceptor program. The Space Solutions segment declined in the quarter, primarily because of the planned wind-down of a multi-year NASA services contract, which had been expected.

Voyager also completed five acquisitions during the year, including ExoTerra Resource and Estes Energetics in the fourth quarter, expanding its propulsion and energetics platform. The company’s Starlab commercial space station development achieved 10 NASA milestones in 2025, and received $56 million in NASA cash milestone proceeds during the year. Total liquidity ended 2025 at $704.7 million.

In an earnings call posted to the company website, CEO Dylan Taylor called 2025 a transformational year for the company, pointing to its completed IPO, record backlog, and what he described as accelerating demand across defense, national security, and space.

“Our defense and national security segment grew significantly, up 59% year over year, driven by execution on next generation interceptor and other classified programs. Our backlog increased 33% year over year, entering 2026 with $266 million to support our accelerating growth,” Taylor said. “During 2025, we raised over $1 billion, including and executing on a successful IPO and issuing a follow-on convertible note, all strengthening our liquidity to fund innovation and strategic growth initiatives. We completed and integrated several acquisitions, expanding our capabilities to meet growing customer demand, which we expect to remain strong in today’s geopolitical environment.”

Taylor was also bullish on the company’s Starlab private space station. “We anticipate NASA will soon release the RFP for the second phase of the Commercial LEO Development Program, or CLD, with a decision later in the year. We are highly confident in the modernized, cost-efficient, and commercially scalable solution that Starlab is delivering to NASA and other key stakeholders,” he said. “The architecture is designed to provide continuous U.S. presence in low-Earth orbit, while enabling a broader transition to commercially-led operations. As the program advances, we are expanding Starlab’s commercial ecosystem, building durable partnerships across mission logistics, life sciences, biopharma, advanced materials, and other high-growth verticals. The approach strengthens demand visibility and reinforces Starlab’s role as an ecosystem, not a single-use platform. “

But Voyager’s big news this week wasn’t just about financial results — it was also about where that capital is being directed. Along with its Low Earth Orbit plans, the company announced a multi-million-dollar strategic investment in Max Space, a startup developing expandable habitat technology for the Moon.

Max Space’s approach is to build habitats that launch compactly — then expand up to 20 times their stowed volume once they reach their destination. That dramatically increases usable floor area per kilogram delivered, which matters enormously when every pound launched to the lunar surface carries a price tag. The flexible geometry of the design also allows the habitat to adapt as missions evolve, from early surface operations to long-duration habitation.

Voyager says the investment is directly tied to its broader lunar roadmap, which spans cislunar mission management, surface logistics, propulsion, and power systems. It also aligns with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s stated goal of establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon by 2028.

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Two companies from different sides of the Atlantic announced they are teaming up to explore satellite refueling — a technology that could fundamentally change the economics of operating spacecraft in orbit.

Orbit Fab and Airbus Defense and Space are working together under a project called RADICAL — part of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems program, funded by the UK Space Agency. The goal is to assess whether Orbit Fab’s RAFTI refueling valve can be integrated into future Airbus geostationary satellites.

The business case for refueling is straightforward: satellites are expensive to build and launch, and propellant is typically the limiting factor in a spacecraft’s operational life. If you can top off a satellite in orbit, you extend its mission lifetime, reduce the cost of replacing it, and gain the flexibility to reposition it as market conditions change. For defense operators in particular, that ability to maneuver — and the resilience it provides — is becoming a strategic priority.

The RADICAL project is designed to work through the practical engineering required: what changes to mission operations, system design, and platform architecture are needed to make refueling possible for a production Airbus satellite? Orbit Fab brings the refueling technology. Airbus brings deep knowledge of geostationary satellite platforms and propulsion systems.

Jacob Geer, Orbit Fab’s managing director in Europe, framed the collaboration as essential to enhancing European competitiveness in the telecom satellite market. The UK Space Agency’s head of telecommunications, Henny Sands, called it a great example of how adaptive the UK industry is to changing global requirements.

Two companies have announced new capital raises.

Sierra Space closed a $550 million Series C equity round led by LuminArx Capital Management. The financing values the company at $8 billion post-money and brings total capital investment in Sierra Space since 2021 to more than $2 billion. The company says the new funding will support expansion of production capacity and continued development of national security space solutions.

Sierra Space has been shifting its focus increasingly toward defense and intelligence customers. It holds contracts with essentially all eight space procurement agencies within the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, including a $450 million award to build satellites for a national security customer and an SDA Tranche 2 contract worth up to $740 million for missile warning and tracking satellites. The company also completed all manufacturing and assembly milestones for its Dream Chaser spaceplane last year, with a demonstration flight planned for late 2026.

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Meanwhile, HawkEye 360 closed an additional Series E round, raising approximately $23 million in new capital. The round included new investors Ghisallo, Principia Growth, and Sixty Degree Capital, alongside continued participation from the Strategic Development Fund. HawkEye 360 provides radio frequency signals intelligence from orbit and is currently integrating its recently acquired Innovative Signal Analysis business. CEO John Serafini said the round reflects investor confidence in the company’s strategy and its progress scaling the business.

Two raises, two different chapters: Sierra Space is capitalizing for growth in the national security space; HawkEye 360 is strengthening its balance sheet as it integrates a new acquisition. Both are signals of continued private capital appetite for defense-adjacent space companies.

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In Depth this week, NASA has expanded its Private Astronaut Mission pool from one company to two. (Paywall)

On Feb. 11, NASA awarded Vast Space its first Private Astronaut Mission to the International Space Station. Vast has never flown a station. Its Haven-1 module isn’t in orbit — it’s targeting a launch no earlier than early 2027. And yet NASA gave the company what had, until that moment, belonged exclusively to Axiom Space across five consecutive mission awards. (Paywall)

If you read the press release and moved on, you missed the story.

The Vast award is a procurement signal. Understanding what it means requires understanding what the Private Astronaut Mission program actually is — and what it isn’t.

A PAM award is not NASA buying a seat on a commercial flight. It is a bilateral services exchange executed through a Space Act Agreement — a non-traditional procurement vehicle authorized under the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Under that structure, the commercial operator purchases NASA-provided services: consumables, cargo storage, crew time, life support, and ISS access. In return, NASA purchases services from the operator — research capacity, payload integration, sample return, or crewed access to commercial facilities. Both parties are delivering value, and both parties are receiving it.

That structure carries fundamentally different legal, accounting, and intellectual property implications than a standard government contract. Companies that arrive at the proposal stage with a Federal Acquisition Regulation-based cost structure and traditional deliverable frameworks are not just underprepared — they’re speaking the wrong language.

The Axiom record demonstrates how this works in practice. Axiom Mission 1 launched in April 2022 as the first fully private astronaut mission to the ISS. Missions 2 and 3 followed at roughly annual cadence. Axiom Mission 4 launched in June 2025, carrying the first astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary to orbit before splashing down off the California coast in July after 18 days aboard the station. By the time Axiom Mission 5 was signed in January 2026, Axiom had accumulated a track record spanning 14 private and government astronauts and more than 160 science and research activities.

NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Destinations Phase 2 program is where that track record pays off. CLD Phase 2 is structured as Funded Space Act Agreements with an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion award envelope and a minimum of two providers. Selection criteria explicitly reward operators who can demonstrate operational execution, attract non-NASA customers, and present a credible path to financial sustainability. The PAM program, run repeatedly, generates evidence for all three.

The capital markets understood this before most procurement professionals did. On the same day NASA awarded Vast its first PAM, Axiom closed a $350 million hybrid financing round co-led by Qatar Investment Authority and Type One Ventures. Hybrid equity-plus-debt with a sovereign wealth co-lead is how infrastructure companies raise capital. Axiom’s cumulative financing now sits at approximately $2.55 billion.

Vast is not Axiom. The company has committed more than $1 billion to Haven-1 ahead of any CLD Phase 2 award — a significant forward bet. The PAM-6 award begins to close the credentialing gap. It gives Vast a bilateral exchange to execute, and a mission record for CLD Phase 2 evaluators to assess.

The broader CLD Phase 2 field also includes Starlab and Blue Origin’s collaboration with Sierra Space. Starlab completed its Commercial Critical Design Review in February 2026. NASA’s decision to award new PAM missions to both Axiom and Vast in the same month is not coincidental — it is deliberate program expansion.

CLD Phase 2 is formally on hold as of Jan. 28, 2026. But the underlying competitive dynamics are set. The hold creates a window, not a reprieve.

The larger implication extends beyond low-Earth orbit. NASA’s long-term commercial framework is built on the principle that the government should be one customer among several in commercially operated destinations — not the owner and operator of the infrastructure itself. That principle does not stop at LEO. Artemis gateway logistics, lunar surface operations, and eventually Mars-architecture support will all face the same design question: should NASA own the asset, or buy bilateral services from a commercial operator under a Space Act Agreement framework?

The PAM program is the answer to that question, demonstrated in practice. Four missions completed, a fifth awarded, a second operator now credentialed, and a legislative framework hardening around the model. The exploration era is not waiting for a new contract vehicle. It is inheriting one that has already been field-tested.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the In Depth tab. Other premium articles this week include How HawkEye 360 Cornered the RF-Intelligence Supply Chain, What Starlab’s Institutional Investor Moment Really Signals, and a the first installment of a new column by space marketing professional Mike Daily about the importance, and best practices, of branding for the space industry.

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• Rapid Advances Reported for Hadley H13 Engine

• Advancing Propellant-Free In-Space Mobility and Deorbiting

• Bankable, But Not Yet Backstopped (Paywall)

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The bipartisan leadership of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is pushing back hard on the Federal Communications Commission.

Committee Chairman Brian Babin and Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren have sent a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr urging the Commission to withdraw — or substantially narrow — a proposed rulemaking titled “Space Modernization for the 21st Century.”

The committee leaders say several provisions of the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking go well beyond communications policy. Their letter warns that the NPRM would require satellite operators to, quote, take all possible steps to assess and mitigate collision risks and certify compliance with an FCC-established human casualty threshold — requirements they argue have nothing to do with spectrum management.

The letter is explicit on the legal question. Members write that the Communications Act of 1934 contains no clear congressional authorization empowering the FCC to regulate space safety, space traffic management, or broader non-communications space operations. They also cite recent Supreme Court decisions as reinforcing limits on federal agencies asserting authority Congress never granted.

And the stakes here are significant. The committee letter notes the proposed requirements would impact billions of dollars in commercial space activities and raise concerns under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and existing national space policy.

The members are asking the FCC to either rescind the NPRM outright — or issue a new, narrower proposal confined strictly to radiofrequency communications licensing. No timeline has been set for the Commission to respond.

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Rocket Lab is expanding again — and this time in two directions at once.

The company has announced the acquisitions of Optical Support Inc. — or OSI — based in Tucson, Arizona, and Precision Components Limited, known as PCL, based in Auckland, New Zealand.

OSI designs and manufactures custom high-precision optical and optomechanical instruments. Its systems are used in national security and commercial satellites, and the company’s resume includes contributions to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Sphere Las Vegas. Rocket Lab says OSI will strengthen its vertical integration for programs like the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, while also positioning the company for next-generation initiatives including the Golden Dome missile defense system and future Mars exploration missions.

This acquisition follows Rocket Lab’s 2025 purchase of Geost (GEE-uhst), which formed the core of what is now called Rocket Lab Optical Systems. OSI was already a key supplier to Geost, so the integration should move quickly.

On the manufacturing side, the acquisition of Precision Components Limited in Auckland creates what Rocket Lab is calling the Auckland Machine Complex — a dedicated facility for high-volume, high-tolerance machined components. PCL has been a Rocket Lab supplier for more than 15 years.

Together, the two deals deepen Rocket Lab’s position as a vertically integrated prime contractor. The company currently holds a total contract backlog of 1.85 billion dollars across its launch and space systems businesses.

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Redwire has released its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 financial results — and the headline from the company’s leadership is that 2025 was, in their words, a transformational year.

Full-year revenue came in at $335.4 million dollars — a 10.3 percent increase over 2024. Fourth-quarter revenue was especially strong, jumping 56.4 percent year-over-year to $108.8 million dollars.

During the earnings call which was recorded and posted to the company website, Redwire Chairman and CEO Peter Cannito said the company is positioned well for the future.

“In 2025, Redwire transformed from a pure-play space provider to an agile, scaled, multi-domain space and defense tech company. We closed our transformational acquisition of Edge Autonomy in June 2025 and have been successfully executing on our integration plan to include the full assumption of Edge Autonomy into the Redwire brand,” Cannito said. “During 2025, Redwire moved up the value chain with five spacecraft platforms and multiple prime contracts in the US and Europe, and two mature combat-proven airborne platforms. We expanded our customer base to more than 170 civil, national security, and commercial space and defense tech customers, emphasizing our breadth and diversity. We added approximately 660 employees for an ending headcount of approximately 1,410 employees around the globe. We ended 2025 with record contracted backlog of $411.2 million, providing confidence as we move into 2026. And finally, strengthened our balance sheet and simplified our capital structure, ending with record year-end total liquidity of $130.2 million.

Along with that backlog, the company ended 2025 with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.52 for the fourth quarter — meaning it booked significantly more new business than it recognized in revenue during the period. Total liquidity at year-end was $130.2 million dollars, more than double where it stood at the end of 2024.

Among the highlights: Redwire landed a $44 million Phase 2 contract for DARPA’s Otter mission, which uses the company’s SabreSat platform in very low Earth orbit. The company also signed an eight-figure agreement to supply international berthing and docking mechanisms for The Exploration Company’s Nyx spacecraft, and delivered more than 100 uncrewed aerial systems to customers in seven countries following its June 2025 acquisition of Edge Autonomy.

Not everything was positive. Redwire posted a net loss of $226.6 million dollars for the full year, driven in large part by more than $130 million dollars in non-recurring charges. Adjusted EBITDA was also negative.

A piece of U.S. launch history has found a new home.

Phantom Space has acquired key assets and intellectual property from Vector Launch Inc. — including flight-proven design elements, engineering data, and proprietary technologies originally developed for Vector’s small-launch vehicle program.

Phantom plans to integrate those assets immediately into its Daytona launch vehicle — a two-stage, mass-manufactured rocket designed to deliver small satellites and spacecraft into orbit. Company officials say the acquisition reduces development risk and advances the path to orbital flight.

There is a personal dimension to this deal as well. Phantom Space was founded in 2019 by Jim Cantrell — who was also a co-founder of Vector Launch. So the acquisition, in a sense, brings these assets back to one of the people who helped create them.

The Daytona vehicle features a modular payload fairing capable of supporting a wide range of spacecraft — from CubeSats to ESPA-class payloads. The company says it has completed successful hot-fire tests of Daytona’s propulsion assemblies and plans to begin integration and qualification activities immediately, with stage-level testing and vehicle milestones scheduled throughout 2026.

Phantom was founded by two of the original five members who built SpaceX. The company’s broader vision includes launch, satellite production, and future orbital infrastructure through its Phantom Cloud constellation.

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There is a potential major shift reshaping the satellite connectivity market.

A new report from Novaspace — the eighth edition of its Capacity Pricing Trends analysis — concludes that the satellite industry has entered what analysts are calling a Post-Capacity Era. The core argument: bandwidth is no longer the basis of competitive differentiation in this market.

The driver of that shift is familiar. Starlink’s vertical integration and aggressive cost compression are resetting expectations across the sector. With global supply rising and cost bases falling, capacity pricing is now on a structural downward trajectory. Data-driven applications are experiencing the steepest price declines, due largely to low-cost non-geostationary orbit supply. Legacy video markets are facing their own structural pressures as viewing habits continue to evolve.

The defining metric in this environment, according to Novaspace, is now cost per gigabyte. Starlink’s pricing — currently below 30 cents per gigabyte — is setting new industry benchmarks and pushing operators toward regional pricing strategies, promotional tiers, and more flexible service offerings. As satellite broadband approaches cost parity with terrestrial service in rural and underserved areas, the competitive landscape is expanding well beyond the satellite sector itself.

The report concludes that in a world where bandwidth is a commodity, the competitive advantage moves downstream — to the terminal, the hardware ecosystem, and the service layer. Companies that can innovate at the device and user experience levels, Novaspace says, will be the ones that lead this next phase of the market.

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In Depth this week ... a $17 million funding round closed quietly in February, and on the surface, it looked like routine Series A news. But the details tell a different story — and if you work anywhere in the space supply chain, this one is worth paying attention to. (Paywall)

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The company is Agile Space Industries, based in Durango, Colorado. It builds chemical propulsion systems — the thrusters that keep satellites in orbit, execute on-orbit maneuvers, and power in-space servicing vehicles.

What makes the funding round notable is who is behind it: Lockheed Martin Ventures. And this is not Lockheed’s first check to Agile. It’s their third — seed round, bridge round, and now Series A. That pattern is not casual portfolio diversification. It is a prime defense contractor systematically positioning itself ahead of what appears to be a serious supply constraint.

Here is the core problem. The domestic supplier base for chemical propulsion has not kept pace with demand. Proliferated low Earth orbit constellations, missile defense programs, and on-orbit servicing platforms are multiplying. The number of suppliers capable of building for those platforms at production scale is not. Supply chain leads are now reporting component lead times of 12 to 18 months across multiple subsystem categories, with integration delays cascading six to nine months downstream. Private equity consolidation of legacy propulsion assets is making competition thinner — and pricing pressure lighter — for the remaining players.

Agile’s answer to that constraint is speed through manufacturing innovation. Using additive manufacturing, the company has compressed design-to-tested-hardware timelines to approximately 19 weeks. Traditional propulsion procurement has historically required 18 to 24 months for the same process. The result: revenue has more than tripled over three years. Bookings are up sixfold.

And here is the detail that matters most for anyone in procurement or program management: the Series A round was oversubscribed. Agile turned capital away. The company had been cash-positive for 18 months before this raise. It did not raise because it needed the money — it raised because contracted backlog now exceeds production capacity.

Lockheed identified that dynamic early and built a real relationship before the market got crowded. For constellation operators, integrators, and primes still on the outside of that relationship — the window to get on the right side of this constraint is narrowing, quarter by quarter.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Capital and Investment tab. Other premium articles this week include an in-depth look into the $6 billion aerospace project pipeline in Florida, why it will take more than legislation to fix satellite manufacturing vulnerabilities, and the realistic economics of the Haven-1 Space Station.

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Worth a Second Look

• NASA Makes Major Changes to Artemis Program

• Strategic Investment Will Advance Satellite Communications, In-Space Data Processing

• Space Force Awards Contract to Starfish Space

• Agreement Reached to Advance In-Space Semiconductor Manufacturing

• The $6 Billion Concentration (Paywall)

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We start with what may be the most closely watched accountability story in human spaceflight in years. NASA has officially released the findings of an independent Program Investigation Team that examined what went wrong during Boeing’s Starliner Crewed Flight Test back in 2024.

Starliner launched on June 5th, 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station. The mission was supposed to last eight to fourteen days. Instead, propulsion system anomalies discovered while the spacecraft was in orbit stretched the mission to 93 days — and ultimately led NASA to make the extraordinary decision to bring the spacecraft home without its crew. Wilmore and Williams eventually returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

Now we know more about why. Investigators found what they describe as an interplay of combined hardware failures, qualification gaps, leadership missteps, and cultural breakdowns — all of which created risk conditions inconsistent with NASA’s human spaceflight safety standards.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that NASA had allowed “overarching programmatic objectives.”

“Mistakes incurred from program’s inception and continued throughout execution, including contractual management, oversight posture, technical rigor, and leadership decision-making. Boeing built the spacecraft, and from the onset, NASA approved variances, and we agreed to fly it. As development progressed, design compromises and inadequate hardware qualification extended beyond NASA’s complete understanding,” Isaacman said. “Now, variances exist across all major aerospace programs and by themselves are not unusual. The engineering reality, however, is that Starliner, with its qualification deficiencies, is less reliable for crew survival than other crewed vehicles. And that was as noted by the report. But at NASA, we managed the contract. We accepted the vehicle. We launched the crew to space. We made decisions from docking through post-mission actions. A considerable portion of the responsibility and accountability rests here.”

As a result of the findings, NASA has formally classified the Starliner crewed flight test as a Type A mishap — the highest-level classification — citing potential for a significant mishap and the financial damages incurred. No astronauts were injured, and the mission did regain spacecraft control prior to docking. But the classification signals that NASA is treating this with full seriousness.

NASA says it will continue working with Boeing to address the technical challenges before flying Starliner again. The full report — with some redactions to protect Boeing’s proprietary information — is available on NASA’s website.

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Transportation is just one aspect of maintaining a sustained human presence in Low Earth Orbit ... one big question is where will that human presence be when the ISS is retired, possibly as early as 2030.

One of the possible replacement commercial stations is being developed by Starlab Space, and that company marked a significant milestone recently, completing its Commercial Critical Design Review, or CCDR, with NASA in attendance. This marks a decisive transition: the program is moving from the design phase into manufacturing and systems integration. In milestone terms, it satisfied the 28th checkpoint on Starlab’s NASA Commercial LEO Destinations Space Act Agreement — a mouthful, but what it means in plain English is that Starlab has demonstrated its design is technically mature, integrated, and ready to be built.

According to Starlab CEO Marshall Smith, the CCDR is a critical step toward delivering that continuous access to Low Earth Orbit with — his words — “no gap in capability to science, industry or national interests.” He also emphasized that the program’s business plan review was completed in parallel, validating what he called a diversified commercial market rather than a government-dependent model.

The Starlab program draws on a remarkable international coalition of partners, including Voyager Technologies, Airbus, Mitsubishi Corporation, MDA Space, Palantir Technologies, ESA, JAXA, and Space Applications Services.

This is a significant milestone. A lot of things have to go right for humanity to maintain an unbroken chain of human presence in orbit — and Starlab just demonstrated that its piece of the puzzle is executable.

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A new report from Verified Market Research finds that the global space robotics market — valued at 4.7 billion dollars in 2024 — is projected to grow to more than 7.3 billion dollars by 2032. That’s a compound annual growth rate of about 7.2 percent over the forecast period.

What’s driving this? A few key forces. First, the increasing complexity of orbital and deep-space missions is accelerating demand for autonomous systems that can perform inspection, assembly, repair, and exploration tasks with minimal human intervention. Second, satellite servicing — including refueling, debris management, and in-space infrastructure maintenance — is creating sustained demand for precision robotic platforms. Third, rapid advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and sensor fusion are expanding what robotic systems can actually do, and where they can do it — from low Earth orbit to the Moon to Mars.

The report notes that North America remains the dominant market, led by U.S. government funding, private sector innovation, and a mature aerospace industrial base. Europe is a strong secondary market. And Asia-Pacific is emerging quickly, with China, India, and Japan all expanding their space robotics capabilities.

There are challenges too. Space robotics systems require extensive testing, radiation hardening, and customization for specific missions — all of which drive up costs and development timelines. And robotic failures in space carry serious financial and reputational consequences, which means reliability and redundancy engineering remain critical and expensive.

The Commercial Space Federation has released a new study titled “Perfecting Public-Private Partnerships: The Future of Government Space Contracts,” authored by the policy consultancy Rational Futures. The report is a candid assessment of how NASA, the Department of Defense, and other space agencies structure their commercial relationships — and it argues that many of those agencies are getting it wrong in ways that lead to cost overruns, schedule delays, and missed opportunities.

The core argument is this: agencies too often conflate “public-private partnership” with specific contract mechanisms — particularly firm-fixed-price contracts — without thinking carefully about whether those mechanisms match the actual risk profile of what they’re buying. The report frames procurement on a spectrum from fully government-controlled programs, where the public sector holds all the risk, to fully commercial models, where a private company holds all the risk and sells services to anyone who will buy them. Most space programs sit somewhere in the middle, and the paper argues that matching the right contract type to the right program characteristics is essential.

The study holds up NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program — the original COTS effort that incubated SpaceX and Orbital Sciences — as the gold standard of what works: cost-sharing, multiple suppliers, stable requirements focused on outcomes rather than process, and large follow-on contracts that gave investors confidence. By contrast, it looks at the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program as a cautionary tale, citing overly optimistic demand projections, shifting requirements, and inconsistent oversight as contributors to delays and cost growth.

The recommendations span three levels. At the agency level: build internal capacity in finance, economics, legal, and procurement — not just engineering. At the program level: conduct rigorous independent market assessments, signal clear multi-year demand, and avoid over-relying on a single vendor. At the contract level: match the procurement vehicle to where the technology actually is, not where you wish it were.

The report’s authors sum it up this way: “Success requires careful planning, involvement of appropriate experts, and understanding of market conditions and program characteristics.” It sounds obvious. But based on recent history, it’s a lesson the industry apparently still needs to hear.

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This week on The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast, I talked with Dr. Belinda Marchand, the chief scientist at Slingshot Space.

Space has become a critical warfighting domain, requiring an approach to training that prepares warfighters to use new technology. AI is redefining space warfare training, and is becoming vital for deterrence and national security.

Slingshot Aerospace is a U.S.-based space data and analytics company focused on making space operations more safe, sustainable, and secure through satellite tracking, space traffic coordination, and high‑fidelity modeling and simulation tools.

Dr. Marchand said that using AI allows warfighters to train like they’ll fight. But she also said that the technology being used can be applied to commercial scenarios as well.

“I think the defense use case was a very valuable and timely example of a way to demonstrate the capabilities of the technology. But the technology itself that powers things like Talos, or even that powers our anomaly detection software like Agatha or anomalous actor detection, all those technologies can be used for other purposes as well, right?” Marchand said. “You can use them to... fly your fleet to control your fleet, to achieve your on-orbit servicing objectives, anything that involves rendezvous proximity operations. You could adapt. If you’re doing RPOs for intercepting something, that’s not that dissimilar from the type of activity you would do to go service something or refuel something, right? Or to do in-orbit manufacturing and things like that. So the actions have elements in common and the framework itself is agnostic to those actions.”

Slingshot recently achieved Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Level 2, validating its ability to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in support of Department of Defense (DoD) missions.

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In Depth this week ... the space industry has a new cost of doing business — and it’s not coming from regulators. It’s coming from physics. (Paywall)

A January 2026 World Economic Forum report put a price tag on orbital debris: somewhere between $26 and $42 billion in projected losses over the next decade. No one sends you a bill. But insurance underwriters, propellant budgets, and procurement officials are quietly collecting anyway.

Here’s the situation: Low Earth orbit is crowded. Over 25,000 tracked objects are up there, plus millions of tiny fragments too small to see — but large enough to destroy a satellite. Mega-constellations from SpaceX, Amazon, and others have turned what was once open frontier into a congested operating environment. Satellites are now maneuvering daily to avoid collisions. Every maneuver burns fuel. Less fuel means shorter missions. Shorter missions mean less revenue.

On the regulatory side, the FCC’s new five-year deorbit rule kicked in last September, requiring satellite operators to bring their spacecraft down within five years of mission end. That sounds simple, but it forces a real tradeoff: every kilogram of propellant reserved for deorbit is fuel you can’t use to extend your operational life. And the rule hits smaller operators hardest — SpaceX already operates this way by design, giving them a quiet competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, the insurance market is repricing in real time. Premiums in high-traffic orbital zones are now eating five to ten percent of total mission budgets — and policies increasingly require operators to demonstrate active maneuverability and credible end-of-life plans just to get coverage.

In Congress, the ORBITS Act is pushing toward mandatory active debris removal — not just preventing new junk, but cleaning up what’s already there.

The bottom line for the industry: orbital sustainability has moved from an aspirational goal to a line item on the income statement. The debris tax is already collecting. The only question is whether your financial model accounts for it.

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From NASA Customer to Market Anchor (Paywall)

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The UK small launch sector is facing a rough moment. Orbex, one of Britain’s most prominent homegrown rocket companies, has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators after its Series D fundraising round came up empty. Merger and acquisition talks also failed to produce a deal. With no funding lifeline in sight, the company is now formally exploring the sale of all or part of its business.

It’s a painful moment for a company that was genuinely close to something. Orbex had brought hundreds of skilled jobs to Scotland, had been at the vanguard of UK space ambitions, and was on the verge of test flights for its Prime microlauncher later this year. All of that is now in limbo.

But here’s where the story takes a turn. Skyrora — another UK launch company — has stepped forward with an interest in acquiring select Orbex assets, including the Sutherland Spaceport in northern Scotland. Skyrora says it’s prepared to invest up to ten million pounds — roughly thirteen-and-a-half million dollars — subject to due diligence and negotiations with the administrators.

The framing from Skyrora is explicitly nationalistic: keeping UK technology under UK ownership, protecting national infrastructure, and safeguarding the return on taxpayer investment that went into Orbex over the years.

Now, nothing is done yet. Administrators have only just been notified, and the legal process has to run its course. But if Skyrora does pull this off, it would be a remarkable consolidation story — one UK launch company absorbing the assets of another to create something more resilient. The Sutherland Spaceport alone would be a significant prize, as it’s one of the few licensed launch facilities in Europe capable of reaching polar and sun-synchronous orbits.

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A new wave of industrial connectivity could be about to reshape how industries operate in remote and underserved areas — and the timeline is tighter than you might expect.

New research from satellite company Viasat, based on a survey of 600 industrial decision-makers worldwide, finds that 91% plan to adopt direct-to-device satellite technology within the next 18 months. The sectors involved span agriculture, energy, mining, logistics, and utilities — industries where reliable connectivity has long been a limiting factor.

At the heart of this shift is a technology called Narrowband Non-Terrestrial Networks — or NB-NTN — a connectivity standard that allows IoT devices to maintain a satellite link when ground-based networks are unavailable or overstretched. Think of it as a seamless fallback that kicks in without any manual intervention.

The data suggests momentum is already building. 78% of respondents say their IoT deployments have accelerated over the past year — and among organizations already using hybrid satellite-terrestrial setups, that figure jumps to 86%.

Viasat frames this less as a performance upgrade and more as a pursuit of what the report calls “coverage certainty” — the ability to stay connected at scale, regardless of where you are or what the local infrastructure looks like.

The findings also carry a pointed message for mobile network operators: direct-to-device satellite capability shouldn’t be treated as a niche add-on. According to the report, it represents a genuine opportunity to expand into new enterprise revenue streams — without requiring significant reinvestment in existing networks.

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The Idaho National Laboratory just released a report called “Weighing the Future: Strategic Options for U.S. Space Nuclear Leadership”, and it lays out three distinct paths forward.

The first is what the report calls “Go Big or Go Home” — a large-scale, hundred-to-five-hundred kilowatt electric project led by NASA or the Department of Defense. But it’s high risk, high reward, and requires consistent top-level funding and political will.

The second option — dubbed the “Chessmaster’s Gambit” — splits the approach into two smaller public-private projects, both under a hundred kilowatts. One would put a reactor in lunar orbit or on the Moon’s surface. The other would be an in-space system. The appeal here is flexibility — private companies choose the technology, which distributes risk and keeps timelines more manageable.

The third path, “Light the Path,” is the most cautious — a small radioisotope demonstration under one kilowatt, designed mainly to build regulatory frameworks and institutional knowledge before committing to bigger bets.

For context on why this matters: NASA has already issued a directive to place a fission reactor on the Moon by fiscal year 2030. That’s four years away. The technology challenges are real — space reactors have to be lightweight, run at much higher temperatures than terrestrial units, and operate for a decade without maintenance. None of that is easy.

Sebastian Corbisiero, the Department of Energy’s Space Reactor Initiative national technical director, described the moment as potentially being on the cusp of a major step forward for nuclear power in space. And given that competitors — particularly China — are investing heavily in space nuclear capabilities, the pressure to act is real.

Which path the U.S. ultimately chooses will say a lot about its appetite for risk — and its confidence in the commercial sector to deliver.

NASA has selected Vast Space for the sixth private astronaut mission to the ISS. The flight is targeting no earlier than summer 2027, launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying a Dragon spacecraft. The crew will spend up to 14 days aboard the station.

This is a milestone for Vast, which is best known for its ambitions to build and operate its own commercial space station — the Haven-2 — as a successor to the ISS. A crewed mission to the station is exactly the kind of operational credibility the company needs to make that case.

Vast has framed the mission as part of the broader transition to commercial space stations, and fully unlocking the orbital economy. The science portfolio planned for the mission spans biology, biotechnology, physical sciences, human research, and technology demonstrations.

What’s interesting here is the strategic layering. Vast isn’t just flying to the ISS for the publicity — the company has a live call for research proposals open right now, meaning external researchers can submit experiments for consideration aboard this mission. That’s a signal that Vast is trying to build an actual customer base and research pipeline before its own station even exists.

The ISS is scheduled for deorbit in 2030. Between now and then, these private astronaut missions serve a dual purpose: they generate revenue for NASA and its partners, and they give commercial operators like Vast the hands-on experience they’ll need to run stations on their own.

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Analysts at MarketsandMarkets are projecting the global space situational awareness market — SSA, for short — will grow from about 1.7 billion dollars in 2025 to nearly 2.8 billion dollars by 2030. That’s a compound annual growth rate of ten percent over five years.

SSA, if you’re not familiar, is the business of tracking what’s in orbit: active satellites, spent rocket bodies, debris fragments, and everything in between. As constellations like Starlink and others pour thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit, the risk of collisions — and the cost of getting it wrong — increases dramatically.

The debris segment is expected to hold the largest share of the SSA market. That tracks. There are hundreds of thousands of debris objects in orbit too small to track reliably but large enough to be catastrophic. Even a centimeter-sized fragment at orbital velocity carries enormous kinetic energy.

Geopolitically, there’s another driver: governments want independent visibility into what’s happening in their orbital neighborhoods. That’s pushing investment in indigenous SSA infrastructure, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, where China, India, Japan, and South Korea are all expanding their space programs and their appetite for homegrown tracking capabilities.

The major players in this space currently include Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Kratos, Parsons, and Peraton — all defense-adjacent firms with deep government relationships. But as the market grows, expect more commercial entrants chasing the non-government slice of that revenue. So the bottom line would appear to be that, if you’re operating in orbit, knowing where your spacecraft ... and everything else ... is has never been more important — or more valuable.

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In Depth this week ... The space economy is booming — but not in the way you might expect. Forget rockets and moonshots. The real action right now is in data. Earth observation satellites, geospatial intelligence platforms, and satellite communications networks are driving a steady wave of mergers and acquisitions, and investors are paying serious money to get in. (Paywall)

Deals in 2024 and 2025 are showing revenue multiples in the one-to-four-and-a-half times range, with EBITDA multiples stretching into the teens — healthy numbers that hold up well against broader aerospace benchmarks. The buyers range from defense giants filling gaps in their geospatial portfolios to private equity firms building roll-up platforms around recurring data revenue. The message from the deal tape is clear: space data is now considered core infrastructure, alongside defense, climate monitoring, and global connectivity.

But here’s where it gets complicated. Regulators are catching up — fast. The European Union is advancing a Space Act that would treat certain satellite-derived data much like personal data under GDPR. The OECD is raising red flags about high-resolution imagery being combined with AI to track individuals and sensitive facilities. And the UN’s space office is pushing new principles for responsible AI in Earth observation. The direction of travel is unmistakable: tighter rules on consent, data provenance, and how satellite analytics can be used and sold.

So the billion-dollar question for investors is this — do current valuations already price in the cost of compliance, or are buyers underwriting a more permissive world than regulators will actually allow?

The answer likely splits the market in two. Companies that build privacy and governance into their core architecture are positioned to command premium valuations. Those treating compliance as an afterthought may face multiple compression, heavier deal indemnities, and shrinking revenue streams.

In the space data economy, your data governance framework may soon matter as much as your satellite constellation.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the In Depth tab. Other premium articles this week include how strategic communications will shape the future of the commercial space industry, and the hidden vulnerability in the U.S. space industrial base.

-Ends-

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SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval to launch up to one million satellites for what the company is calling an orbital data center system.

To put that number in perspective, that’s roughly a thousand times larger than SpaceX’s current Starlink internet constellation. The FCC’s Space Bureau accepted the application last week, setting the wheels in motion for what could become an unprecedented expansion of commercial space operations.

According to the filing, these satellites would operate at altitudes between 310 and 1,243 miles above Earth, organized in orbital shells spanning up to 30 miles each. The system would rely primarily on high-bandwidth optical links to communicate between satellites and connect with the existing Starlink network.

What’s particularly interesting here is the timing. This filing comes on the heels of SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company. In the application, SpaceX characterizes this orbital data center system as the first step toward becoming what’s called a Kardashev Type Two civilization—that’s a theoretical framework describing a civilization advanced enough to harness the full power of its host star.

SpaceX has requested several waivers from standard FCC regulations, including exemptions from typical deployment milestones and surety bond requirements. The commission has set March 6 as the deadline for public comments on the application.

If approved, this would represent a fundamental shift in how we think about computing infrastructure—moving massive data processing capabilities off Earth and into orbit.

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According to a new report from Verified Market Reports, the space robotics sector is positioned for robust expansion over the next decade. The market, valued at 5.1 billion dollars in 2024, is expected to reach 14.5 billion dollars by 2033—that’s a compound annual growth rate of 12.5 percent.

The drivers behind this growth are multifaceted. There’s accelerating demand for on-orbit servicing, satellite life extension, debris mitigation, and planetary exploration. But what’s really changing the game are advances in autonomy and artificial intelligence.

The report highlights how robotic systems are transitioning from government-led experimentation to commercially scalable deployment. We’re seeing robots designed for satellite servicing, refueling, inspection, and in-space assembly becoming integral to cost-optimization strategies for satellite operators. This directly supports longer satellite lifecycles, reduced launch frequency, and improved return on space infrastructure investments.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are redefining what’s operationally possible. Autonomous navigation, fault detection, and adaptive manipulation allow space robots to operate with minimal human intervention. This is crucial for mitigating communication latency and enabling deep-space and cislunar missions.

The growth isn’t limited to commercial applications either. Space robotics is emerging as a core enabler for defense applications—satellite inspection, threat monitoring, and orbital asset protection. Governments worldwide are prioritizing resilient and responsive space infrastructure, creating sustained demand for robotic platforms.

Looking ahead, robotic systems are foundational to lunar and Martian exploration strategies. They enable surface mobility, regolith handling, construction, and scientific experimentation while reducing human risk and establishing infrastructure for future crewed missions.

Despite the momentum, challenges remain. High upfront development costs, technical complexity, regulatory uncertainty, and mission risk continue to present obstacles. However, the industry is addressing these through modular design architectures, digital twins, and simulation-driven development. Public-private partnerships are also playing a critical role by sharing financial risk and accelerating validation through government-sponsored missions.

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Voyager Technologies and Max Space have announced a collaboration to advance expandable space habitat technology. This partnership brings together Voyager’s experience delivering mission-critical space systems with Max Space’s high-volume, low-mass expandable structure technology.

According to Voyager chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor, the Moon is no longer viewed as a single destination or a symbolic achievement. It’s becoming the next operational domain in a growing space economy that spans exploration, science, national security, and commercial development.

What makes expandable structures so significant? They offer a step change in how surface infrastructure can be delivered and deployed. Max Space’s technology is built on 40 years of on-orbit heritage and represents what the company says is a significant improvement over previous generations.

The development path is phased and methodical. Ground validation and in-space demonstrations are planned for later this decade, with operational lunar and Mars capabilities aligned with NASA’s exploration timelines on the horizon. The partnership emphasizes early risk retirement, interoperability, and commercial scalability as guiding principles.

This collaboration reflects a broader trend in the space industry—moving from short-duration missions to sustained operational presence beyond low Earth orbit. As the space economy expands, infrastructure designed for endurance and industrial-scale execution becomes increasingly important.

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NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate is inviting public feedback on its prioritization of technology shortfalls critical to civil space. The deadline for input is February 20, so if you’re listening to this and have expertise in the field, there’s still time to participate.

NASA has identified 32 technology shortfalls—these are technology areas requiring further development to meet future exploration, science, and mission needs. Each shortfall includes a subset of specific functions that must be achieved to overcome that particular challenge.

This represents a streamlined approach compared to NASA’s 2024 effort, which featured 187 shortfalls. The agency consolidated these into broader, integrated categories based on stakeholder feedback, making the process more efficient and accessible.

Why does this matter? This prioritization framework will guide NASA’s evaluation of current technology development efforts and may inspire new investments within the agency or spark innovative partnerships. Understanding and prioritizing the most impactful efforts allows NASA to appropriately direct available resources to best support mission needs.

The Space Technology Mission Directorate’s investment strategy is comprehensive. It aligns with the current Presidential Administration’s priorities and NASA’s Moon to Mars strategy. It focuses on science priorities identified in the Decadal Surveys. It fosters creation and growth of the space economy through industry partnerships and small business innovation.

NASA is encouraging all U.S. businesses, organizations, agencies, and individuals with a vested interest in space technology to review the shortfall list and submit feedback. This collaborative approach to identifying and addressing technology gaps represents a best practice in government-industry partnership.

The results will inform not just immediate investment decisions but also the development of long-term technology roadmaps.

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NASA and Momentus have signed a Space Act Agreement for a mission demonstrating rendezvous and proximity operations, as well as formation flying in low Earth orbit. At the center of this mission is NASA’s R5 Spacecraft 10, which will act as a free-flying imager for Momentus’ Vigoride 7 Orbital Service Vehicle.

The R5-S10 will assess spacecraft health and performance, marking a critical step in refining In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing capabilities—essential for future autonomous space operations. The mission is funded and managed by NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program and the Engineering Directorate at Johnson Space Center.

There’s an additional military dimension to this mission. NASA is supporting Momentus in executing a rendezvous demonstration for the Air Force Research Lab’s SPACEWERX organization. The Low-Cost Multispectral Rendezvous and Proximity Operations Sensor suite will enhance spacecraft situational awareness and relative navigation—critical capabilities for satellite servicing and space debris management.

The mission will also demonstrate inter-satellite link technology using WiFi-based data transmission. The CubeSat will transfer large files to the Vigoride host platform, which will then downlink them to ground stations. This demonstrates the viability of real-time space communication for future missions.

Vigoride 7 is scheduled for launch no earlier than March 2026 aboard a SpaceX Transporter mission.

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In Depth this week ... the dream of space tourism is hitting turbulence. Just weeks ago, Blue Origin announced it’s grounding its New Shepard tourist flights for at least two years, marking a dramatic shift in an industry that once promised exponential growth. (Paywall)

The pause comes on the heels of Virgin Galactic’s suspension of operations back in June 2024. That means the suborbital space tourism market—the more affordable option for space travel—is effectively dormant through at least 2027.

So what happened? Industry analysts say the business model simply didn’t work. Despite ticket prices of up to $600,000, companies couldn’t turn a profit. Vehicles required weeks of refurbishment between flights. The rapid reusability that makes SpaceX profitable never materialized for suborbital tourism.

And demand fell short of projections. The initial wave of celebrity millionaires proved finite, and there wasn’t a second wave waiting. The gulf between $600,000 tickets and what middle-class space enthusiasts could afford—somewhere between $10,000 and $50,000—remains unbridgeable.

Meanwhile, orbital tourism is thriving. SpaceX and Axiom Space continue flying paying customers to the International Space Station at $55 million per seat. Paradoxically, this ultra-premium model proves more sustainable because expectations align with reality: a tiny market of ultra-wealthy individuals seeking transformative experiences.

Market forecasts have been slashed dramatically. Original projections of up to $10 billion by 2030 have been revised down to $2 to $4 billion. The vision of “space for everyone” is being pushed further into the 2030s.

For now, space tourism remains what it has always been: an exclusive experience for the ultra-wealthy, with orbital flights as its most viable expression. The democratization of space will have to wait.

Paid subscribers can read the full article on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Market Insights tab, where you can also find a deep dive on how space insurance brokers engineer risk. You can also check out our article on the microchip bottleneck under the Supply Chain tab.

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The House Science, Space and Technology Committee took its first look at the NASA 2026 Reauthorization bill in a markup hearing this week.

The full committee markup is the first opportunity for lawmakers to formally vote on the underlying bill, and offer amendments.

The bill brings a particular focus on the role the commercial space industry will play in future NASA missions. It explicitly empowers the NASA Administrator to enter into agreements and public–private partnerships with U.S. commercial providers to support human exploration of the Moon and cislunar space, expanding a model pioneered for cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS). The bill directs NASA to “support the development and demonstration of” human-rated lunar landing capabilities and, subject to funding, to procure those capabilities from “not fewer than two commercial providers,” effectively guaranteeing a multi‑vendor market for lunar landers and related services.

The legislation requires that any commercial provider supplying human lunar landing systems be a U.S. commercial provider, reinforcing a domestic industrial base for high‑end human‑spaceflight hardware and operations. By tying these systems directly to NASA’s Moon‑to‑Mars roadmap and Artemis missions, the bill signals steady demand for lunar transportation and surface operations that could anchor long‑term business plans in the commercial space sector.

Committee Chairman Brian Babin of Texas said that passing the reauthorization is essential to America’s future in space.

“The NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026 ensures that America does not merely participate in the next year of space exploration, but that we lead it. It strengthens our commitment to returning astronauts to the moon and building the capabilities needed to send humans onward to Mars,” Babin said. “It supports the systems, the technologies, and partnerships required for deep space missions, while also fueling a growing commercial economy and low Earth orbit that will sustain American leadership for many decades. With China nipping at our heels and investing heavily in its own ambitions beyond Earth, we cannot afford to drift without direction. This legislation ensures the United States sets the pace, establishes the standards, and carries forward the spirit of exploration that has long defined our nation.”

The bill positions commercial space stations and other private platforms as the backbone of U.S. low‑Earth orbit operations once the ISS is retired, directing NASA to spell out its research, development, and operational requirements in orbit and share them with U.S. industry.

Another section orders a report on the risks of any gap in U.S. access to low‑Earth orbit platforms, including the potential impact on “the development of the United States-based commercial space industry,” and explicitly lists “increasing investment in and accelerating development of commercial space stations” as one option to prevent such a gap. By writing commercial platforms into the strategy for replacing the ISS, the bill effectively treats private space stations as critical national infrastructure and a central pillar of the future orbital economy.

While the bill aims to expand commercial roles, it also tightens guardrails by requiring NASA to certify compliance with existing “commercial item” and competition statutes. Collectively, the provisions would entrench commercial companies as indispensable partners in NASA’s exploration, ISS transition, and low‑Earth orbit strategies.

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Blue Origin will pause its New Shepard flights for at least two years, and shift resources to further accelerate development of the company’s human lunar capabilities, the company announced late last week. Blue Origin says the decision reflects its commitment to the nation’s goal of returning to the Moon and establishing a permanent, sustained lunar presence.

New Shepard has flown 38 times and carried 98 humans above the Kármán line to date. New Shepard has also launched more than 200 scientific and research payloads from students, academia, research organizations, and NASA.

Blue Origin’s larger rocket, New Glenn, is slated to fly for the third time in late February, though a launch window has not been announced. That flight is scheduled to deploy the BlueBird 7 communications satellite for AST SpaceMobile.

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A Series C funding round has resulted in a $470 million growth capital raise for CesiumAstro, which the company says cements its position as a mission-critical provider of next-generation space and defense communications. The funding includes $270 million in equity, led by Trousdale Ventures.

The capital will fuel CesiumAstro’s rapid scale-up, including the build-out of a new 270,000-square-foot headquarters, expanded manufacturing capacity, and accelerated deployment of its software-defined, AI-enabled space communications platforms worldwide.

The funding comes amid strong operational execution, as CesiumAstro advances multiple government and commercial programs and expands its portfolio of software-defined communications systems.

Proceeds will support expanded manufacturing, accelerated AI-enabled communications development, scaled production of the company’s fully integrated Element LEO satellite, and growth of global technical and program teams.

A mission order for the fifth private astronaut mission (PAM) to the International Space Station has been signed by NASA and Axiom Space, the fifth consecutive such award granted by the agency.

Axiom Mission 5 (Ax-5) is targeted to launch no earlier than January 2027 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and is expected to spend up to 14 days docked to the space station. The crew complement is pending final agreements and agency and international approvals and will be announced at a future date.

As part of the NASA award, Axiom Space brings on Voyager Technologies as a teammate participating in payload integration.

In four years, Axiom Space has successfully executed four missions onboard the space station, flying 14 private and government astronauts, who conducted more than 160 science and research activities, and more than 100 outreach and media engagements while on orbit.

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The satellite propulsion market, which encompasses propulsion systems that enable satellites to maintain orbit, change trajectories, control orientation, prevent collisions, or deorbit at mission end, is on track for significant expansion over the coming decade. Stratview Research projects that the market will grow from $3.08 billion in 2024 to $7.82 billion by 2032, achieving a CAGR of 12.3 % during the forecast period (2025-2032).

The single most important growth driver is the expansion in satellite launches for communication and Earth observation services, as the proliferation of satellites-which require reliable and efficient propulsion for accurate orbital placement and station-keeping-boosts demand across commercial, government, and defense sectors.

The electric propulsion segment is expected to be the fastest-growing segment through 2032, propelled by its efficiency, extended mission durations, and lower propellant requirements compared to chemical systems. As satellite platforms-particularly small and medium satellites-prioritize weight and performance, manufacturers and developers are increasingly investing in electric propulsion technologies that support longer operational life and reduced mission costs.

Market drivers include an increasing number of satellite launches for communication and Earth observation services; the rising adoption of efficient electric propulsion systems for extended mission life and reduced propellant needs, and; growth in commercial space activities driving demand for satellite propulsion innovations.

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A stark divide is reshaping the space industry—and it comes down to a decision made back in late 2022.

In Depth this week, the industry split between adaptive commercial operators and constrained government programs. (Paywall)

When pandemic-era supply shortages hit satellite manufacturers, they faced a choice: wait for supply chains to recover, or rebuild them from scratch. Four years later, the companies that chose to rebuild are deploying satellite constellations on schedule. The ones that waited? They’re still waiting.

This isn’t just about pandemic recovery. An analysis published this week shows the space industry has fundamentally restructured into two tiers—where organizational agility matters more than component availability for well-funded operators, while material constraints continue to strangle everyone else.

Back in mid-2022, the crisis was severe. Semiconductor lead times stretched to 40 to 52 weeks—triple the pre-pandemic baseline. Optical terminals for satellites required 18 months. Radiation-hardened processors? Also 18 months. As one production manager told Via Satellite: “After COVID, there are no more miracles.”

Fast forward to 2026, and some constraints have actually worsened. Rare earth elements, critical for satellite control systems, still face 12 to 18 month delays. China controls up to 93 percent of global rare earth processing. Heat pipe manufacturers can produce 200 to 300 units annually, but constellation demand sits at 600 to 1,000 units. The math simply doesn’t work.

So how are some companies succeeding? Vertical integration. SpaceX, for example, now manufactures roughly 85 percent of its components in-house—from engines to satellite systems. The result? 62 Starlink launches in just the first half of 2025.

But this strategy requires massive capital most companies lack. And it doesn’t solve the geology problem—dysprosium deposits concentrate in China, and no amount of in-house manufacturing changes that reality.

Government programs face additional constraints. Procurement regulations prevent the rapid supplier switching that commercial operators employ. The Space Development Agency experienced 6 to 8 month delays on its Tranche 1 constellation, partially due to propulsion supply chain issues.

Meanwhile, China has commissioned 37 satellite manufacturing plants, with more under construction—creating competitive pressure through sheer manufacturing scale.

The analysis concludes that organizational structure now determines competitive positioning as much as technology capability. Market consolidation appears inevitable, with only vertically-integrated players able to maintain schedule reliability. For the rest of the industry, the constraints persist.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab, where you can also find a report on how power system supply chains are constraining the mega-constellation era.

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The U.S. Space Force Space Development Agency (SDA) has awarded a $52.5 million contract to Starfish Space to provide Deorbit-as-a-Service (DaaS) for satellites within the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The award is the first such contracted mission for end-of-life satellite disposal service for any provider.

Under the contract, Starfish Space will build, launch, and operate an Otter spacecraft in low Earth orbit (LEO) to safely and efficiently dispose of SDA satellites at the end of their operational lives. The mission begins with an initial deorbit, with options for multiple additional deorbits, enabled by Otter’s significant capacity and ability to service several satellites in a single mission.

As LEO constellations continue to expand and require refresh cycles, operators must put more emphasis on managing end-of-life disposal safely, reliably, and at scale. Until now, operators have only had two options for managing end-of-life: actively deorbit satellites prematurely to mitigate risk of early failure and resulting operational hazards, or fly satellites for longer and contend with increasing debris and collision risks across their constellation. With Deorbit-as-a-Service, operators have a better alternative: maximize the operational life and value of their constellations and rely on vendors to dispose of any satellites which cannot dispose of themselves.

The mission, which is targeting a 2027 launch date, will demonstrate how commercial Deorbit-as-a-Service can support both government and commercial constellation operators, maximizing the value and capabilities LEO operators can derive from their constellations as they continue to scale.

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In a related development, the European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a contract valued at more than $475,000 to Astroscale UK to lead the design of the In-Orbit Refurbishment and Upgrading Service (IRUS). The novel mission concept is designed to lead to technology that will enable satellites to be upgraded, repaired, and extended while in orbit. This initiative supports ESA’s Space Safety Program, reinforcing Europe’s commitment to reducing orbital risks and ensuring safe operations for future generations.

With the involvement of the spacecraft manufacturer and operator BAE Systems in the role of a future in-orbit servicing client, IRUS represents a major step towards a circular space economy, where satellites are maintained, repaired and enhanced in orbit rather than treated as single-use. Developing this new capability will pave the way for more complex In-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM) capabilities – as refurbishment and upgrading are essential precursors to assembling and manufacturing platforms in space.

The eight-month Phase A study contract will develop the technical groundwork and commercial case for in-orbit refurbishment and upgrading services. The team will explore how robotic and servicing technologies can safely connect with and refurbish satellites already in orbit, assessing the technical feasibility and commercial viability of upgrading a satellite or extending its life through replacing degraded or out-of-date subsystems such as batteries, solar panels and on-board computers.

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The Optical (laser) Satellite Communication Market is projected to grow from $620 million in 2025 to $1.56 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 20.4%, according to a new report from MarketsandMarkets. The market is growing steadily, driven by a growing need for secure, high-capacity data links across space missions, defense applications, and commercial satellite networks. Improvements in laser terminal pointing and tracking systems, along with AI-based link management, are making these systems more reliable and easier to operate.

The demand is rising for high-capacity inter-satellite links, secure data transmission, and low-latency connectivity across LEO and multi-orbit satellite constellations. The optical (laser) satellite communication market is driven by the need for high-throughput and secure data links to support growing satellite data traffic. There is an increase in the adoption of laser inter-satellite links in LEO constellations, and demand for low-latency connectivity across defense and commercial missions is a key growth factor.

By component, the Pointing, Acquisition, and Tracking (PAT) module segment is projected to account for the largest market share during the forecast period. By application, the network backbone and relay communications segment is expected to see the highest growth, driven by the use of optical intersatellite links to build space-based mesh networks that reduce dependence on ground stations.

North American accounted for a 67.9% market revenue share in 2024. However, the Asia Pacific region is expected to be the fastest-growing region during the forecast period.

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A milestone year has been reported by Astra, showing $45 million in revenue for 2025, breakeven EBITDA and 100% satellite engine mission reliability. The company says it has shipped 110 satellite engine systems in the past calendar year, surpassing a key operating milestone set when the company went private in 2024.

Astra shipped the 110 systems with a team of approximately 100 employees, reflecting operating leverage driven by tighter process gating, increased automation, and execution discipline across manufacturing, test, and their supply chain. All systems are designed, manufactured, and tested at Astra’s Alameda, California facility.

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A series F funding round coming in at just under $130 million has been closed by Interstellar Technologies through a third-party allotment of new shares. The round was completed with the investments from SBI Group, Nomura Real Estate Development, B Dash Venture, SMBC Edge, and existing shareholders, in addition to the previously announced investors, and represents one of the largest fundraising efforts to date by a privately held space startup in Japan.

The round, led by Woven by Toyota, raised $95.5 million through a third-party allotment of preferred shares in an up-round. In addition, the company secured just over $34.2 million in debt financing from financial institutions, including loan facilities with stock acquisition rights provided by the Japan Finance Corporation.

Alongside the fundraising, secondary transactions with existing shareholders were also conducted to optimize the company’s capital structure. Nomura Securities provided advisory support in this series, including the introduction of several potential investors, some of which resulted in fundraising.

The funds raised in this round will be used primarily for the development of first ZERO orbital launch vehicle, strengthening the manufacturing system toward future commercialization, and the research and development of satellites, thereby driving further expansion of both businesses.

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Launch timing for the BlueBird 7 mission has been announced by AST SpaceMobile. The launch is currently scheduled for late February from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle.

Identical to BlueBird 6, BlueBird 7 is the second satellite in AST SpaceMobile’s next-generation campaign. At nearly 2,400 square feet, it features the largest commercial communications array in low Earth orbit, 3.5 times larger than BlueBirds 1-5. Its size and design, built on significant technical innovation and supported by more than 3,800 patent and patent-pending claims, enable peak data rates of up to 120 Mbps space-based broadband connectivity for voice, data, and streaming.

The next generation BlueBirds are designed to be compatible with all major launch vehicles. Future missions on New Glenn are expected to deliver up to 8 next generation BlueBirds per flight, with its seven-meter fairing enabling twice the payload volume of five-meter class commercial launch systems.

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In depth this week, the satellite industry faced a supply chain nightmare in 2022, with critical components like optical communication terminals and radiation-hardened processors backordered for 18 months. Industry analysts predicted widespread deployment delays that would cripple the booming constellation business. But those delays never materialized—at least not for commercial operators. (Paywall)

According to industry data, constellation operators achieved 94% of their planned launch targets despite the crisis. SpaceX launched 96 missions in 2023 alone, more than all other launch providers worldwide combined. OneWeb finished deploying its 648-satellite constellation on schedule by 2023.

The secret? Commercial operators rebuilt their supply chains from scratch rather than waiting for global markets to recover. Companies like SpaceX doubled down on vertical integration, manufacturing critical components in-house at their Redmond, Washington facility—a strategy industry veterans initially dismissed as inefficient.

The approach created what one analysis calls “a parallel manufacturing economy” built on three pillars: making components internally, stockpiling critical parts, and simplifying satellite designs to reduce dependencies.

The strategy worked. While component shortages were real—German optical terminal maker Mynaric nearly went bankrupt before being acquired—commercial operators maintained their production pace through manufacturing flexibility unavailable to competitors.

The exception highlights the rule: The Space Development Agency, bound by government procurement regulations, experienced exactly the delays commercial operators avoided on their Tranche 1 satellite constellation.

Industry observers say these manufacturing changes aren’t temporary fixes but represent a permanent shift in constellation economics, widening the gap between operators controlling their own production and those relying on traditional supply chains.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab, where you can also find deep dives on Supply Chain Sovereignty in Rare Materials, The Strategic Premium on Supply Chain Gaps, and The CEO Playbook for Supply Chain Resilience.

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Bipartisan legislation to provide regulatory predictability to the satellite industry, boost high-speed Internet access, and ensure American space leadership has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Peter Welch (D-VT).

The SAT Streamlining Act establishes a clear, one-year deadline for the FCC to make a decision on a license application. These changes would help expand broadband access to underserved areas, and incentivize commercial satellite operators to base operations in the United States over foreign jurisdictions where satellite application processes may be less burdensome. The legislation also standardizes “market access” for foreign satellite systems operating in the United States by capping licenses at 15 years, aligning them with the 15-year approval term applied to U.S. companies.

The legislation establishes strict deadlines for the FCC to act on applications. The agency would have one year to approve or deny applications for satellite licenses, including those for geostationary and non-geostationary orbit space stations and earth stations. If the FCC misses these deadlines, applications would be automatically approved.

For license renewals, the FCC would have 180 days to make decisions. Minor technical modifications to licenses would need to be processed within 90 days, while certain equipment replacement requests would get expedited 30-day reviews.

Tom Stoup is the president of the Satellite Industry Association. He says the industry will benefit greatly from a standardized process.

“Members of Congress realize that the industry has grown so rapidly that we need to find ways to be able to expedite the licensing process. And I think in a nutshell, that’s really it,” Stroup said. “I mean, it’s just like The FCC has done a great job of dealing with some of the backlog and applications. And there’s a proceeding at the FCC on creating a new set of rules with their modernization proceeding. And I think, again, it all ties into a recognition of the growth in the industry and the importance of the national economy.”

The bill emphasizes that the U.S. space industry is vital for the economy and job creation. It aims to ensure America maintains global leadership in commercial space by modernizing regulatory processes to keep pace with industry innovation.

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A new demonstrator called Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN (Space Radio Access Network) has been launched into orbit. Its mission is to enable standardized global connectivity by exploring advanced 5G Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) capabilities. This demonstrator aims to explore the 5G NTN, a versatile connectivity technology compatible with all types of business applications.

The demonstration will confirm the feasibility of providing universal connectivity that is standardized, interoperable, and globally available for commercial, defence or governmental use.

Airbus UpNext SpaceRAN will leverage Airbus’ software-defined satellite 1 capabilities to manage and optimize 5G signals in orbit. By processing data directly in space rather than simply relaying it, the demonstrator 2 will prove that we can reduce latency, maximize data throughput, and enable more efficient network management and routing, opening the door to user-to-user direct connectivity.

Developed as part of Air!5G, a project supported by the French government through the France 2030 investment plan under the Future Networks strategy, this demonstrator is expected to show its first results by 2028.

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In anticipation of its Initial Public Offering, York Space Systems has launched the roadshow for the IPO of 16,000,000 shares of its common stock.

In addition, York intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 2,400,000 shares of its common stock at the initial public offering price, less underwriting discounts and commissions. The initial public offering price is expected to be between $30 and $34 per share.

York has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “YSS.”

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective.

The first Rocket Lab launch of 2026 successfully lifted two spacecraft into orbit for European space technology company, Open Cosmos.

That’s Murielle Baker is the Director of Corporate and Launch Communications at Rocket Lab. “On board Electron today are two small sats by Open Cosmos that are heading to a 1,050 kilometer low Earth orbit at an 89 degree inclination. The pair will verify new capabilities that Open Cosmos is developing, and it is the first time flying on Electron for the Open Cosmos team.

The mission ‘The Cosmos Will See You Now’ lifted off from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 11:52 p.m. local time on January 22. The two spacecraft were deployed into an ≈652 mile low Earth orbit. It was the company’s 80th electron launch overall.

The story was a bit different at Launch Complex 3 in Wallops Island, Virginia however. Rocket Lab released a statement saying that qualification testing of the Stage 1 tank for its larger Neutron rocket Wednesday night resulted in a rupture during a hydrostatic pressure trial. The company stressed that testing failures are not uncommon during qualification testing, and that structures are intentionally stressed to their limits to validate structural integrity and safety margins and ensure the robust requirements for a successful launch can be comfortably met.

The Company intends to provide an update on the Neutron schedule during its 2025 Q4 earnings call in February.

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Integration has begun on the Vast Haven-1 commercial space station. Scheduled to be the world’s first private space station, Haven-1 is designed as a standalone, crewed station and serves as the first step for Haven-2, a multi-module station capable of supporting a continuous human presence in low-Earth orbit (LEO) that is Vast’s proposed successor to the ISS.

The first phase of Haven-1 integration includes installation of the station’s pressurized fluid systems, including thermal control, life support, and propulsion system tubes, and component trays and tanks. These systems will undergo pressure, leak, and functional testing. The second phase of integration will incorporate avionics, guidance, navigation and control systems, and air revitalization hardware. The third and final phase will complete the vehicle with crew habitation and interior closeouts, exterior micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) shielding, thermal radiator installation, and solar array integration, bringing Haven-1 to a fully flight-ready configuration.

Based on the current integration timeline, Vast is updating its schedule for Haven-1 to be ready to launch Q1 2027.

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The polar region satellite communications industry is on the verge of significant expansion, driven by increasing technological advancements and growing needs for connectivity in extreme environments. According to new analysis from The Business Research Company, as demand intensifies for robust communication systems in the Arctic and Antarctic, the market is set to experience remarkable growth in the coming years.

The polar region satellite communications market is anticipated to reach a value of $4.25 billion by 2030, showcasing a strong compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3%. This surge is largely fueled by the deployment of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations specifically focused on polar coverage, integration with Arctic navigation and surveillance systems, and the increasing use of AI-powered communication optimization technologies. Additionally, expanding activities in polar resource exploration and a growing reliance on emergency and disaster communication services further contribute to this robust growth. Key trends expected to shape the market include the expansion of LEO constellations to enhance polar communication, rising demand for resilient systems to support Arctic shipping, increasing scientific research requiring high-bandwidth data transmission, widespread adoption of portable satellite terminals for fieldwork, and advancements in high-frequency Ka- and Ku-band solutions designed to withstand harsh weather conditions.

One critical driver of market expansion is the rollout of low-earth orbit satellite constellations tailored for polar regions. These constellations improve connectivity and coverage in remote areas, supporting a variety of applications from scientific missions to commercial operations.

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In depth this week, Congress has handed NASA its biggest budget in nearly three decades, and with it, a clear mandate: put commercial space companies at the center of America’s future in orbit and on the Moon. (Paywall)

On January 15, lawmakers approved a $27.5 billion package for NASA for fiscal year 2026, combining traditional appropriations with a special reconciliation bill. The move reverses a proposed 24 percent cut from the Trump administration and instead boosts funding for exploration systems, science, and new commercial space stations in low Earth orbit. It also cements a bipartisan deal that treats commercial partnerships not as experiments, but as national infrastructure.

At the heart of the shift is a new role for NASA as an “anchor customer” rather than the builder and operator of its own spacecraft and stations. Reauthorization language led by Senators Maria Cantwell and Ted Cruz instructs the agency to use commercial capabilities “as appropriate and practicable” for lunar missions, cargo runs, and low Earth orbit operations, tilting policy in favor of private providers unless safety or technical issues get in the way.

The money will flow into two big arenas. First, commercial space stations: NASA’s Commercial LEO Destinations program will pick at least two station providers this April, with about $1 to $1.5 billion in funding over five years and the promise of long-term NASA tenancy after the International Space Station retires around 2030. Companies like Blue Origin and Sierra Space with their Orbital Reef concept, Axiom Space with its ISS-attached modules, Voyager Space and Airbus with Starlab, and newcomer Vast are all vying to become the next platforms where astronauts, researchers, and private customers work and live in orbit.

Second, the Moon: NASA is putting $250 million into its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program this year and has shifted it under the Artemis exploration umbrella. Multiple private lander companies will compete to deliver NASA and commercial payloads to the lunar surface, including missions by Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic, and Firefly that together represent hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts and could set the pace for a broader lunar economy.

But this new era comes with a catch. The same reconciliation bill that boosts NASA’s budget also locks in four more years of funding for the government-built Space Launch System rocket—about $4.1 billion through 2029—shielding it from the year‑to‑year budget fights that commercial programs still face. That creates a two‑tier landscape: traditional contractors on SLS enjoy stable, protected revenue, while commercial launch and station providers live with the risk that Congress could trim their lines in any given budget cycle.

Analysts warn that this “bifurcated” funding model could actually slow the commercial transition NASA says it wants, because companies cannot safely plan multi‑year hardware investments around revenue that might disappear with a single appropriations bill. As a result, many space infrastructure investors increasingly treat NASA as an important but unreliable baseline customer, and push providers to build business models that lean more heavily on international partners, research firms, and private astronauts.

The next 12 to 18 months will show whether this commercial‑first strategy truly takes hold. Key tests include NASA’s selection of new station partners, a string of lunar lander flights, and the agency’s 2027 budget request, which will signal whether Congress intends to keep backing commercial space at today’s levels or let the experiment stall.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the In Depth tab. Other premium articles this week included an analysis of supply chain sovereignty in rare materials; a look at the strategic premium on supply chain gaps; and Redwire’s $925 million bet on Edge Autonomy.

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AI-first Earth intelligence platform SkyFi has announced that it has raised $12.7 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Buoyant Ventures and IronGate Capital Advisors.

This investment will accelerate product development and enhance SkyFi’s technology, including its platform’s user interface and analytical tools. Additionally, the company plans to forge new partnerships with satellite operators to expand its on-demand data offerings and AI-enabled analytic capabilities for leading commercial and government customers worldwide.

Kirk Konert, managing partner at AE Industrial Partners, explains what “Series A” is, and what comes next.

“Series A is; you’ve actually sold your product, now you need the money to actually go make that product or software. Series B is; you’ve taken that next step and have won a significant contract. Now you need help scaling from a prototype to a full manufacturing product. And then Series C; now you have multiple products you need to make. Now you need growth capital.”

SkyFi’s growing network of more than 50 geospatial imagery partners currently provides optical, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), hyperspectral, and aerial imagery, as well as data analytics, to industries including defense, energy, finance, infrastructure and construction, environmental services, agriculture, insurance, and mining.

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Intuitive Machines has completed its acquisition of Lanteris Space Systems (“Lanteris”), formerly Maxar Space Systems. The acquisition, first announced in November 2025, was completed for $800 million before closing adjustments, consisting of $450 million in cash and $350 million in Intuitive Machines Class A common stock.

Lanteris’ Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit and geostationary satellites support missile warning and tracking, tactical intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, Earth observation, and space domain awareness.

The acquisition aligns with the Intuitive Machines vision, strengthening the company’s position as a vertically integrated next generation space prime that is able to build, connect, and operate end-to-end mission solutions unique to the marketplace today.

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A couple of notable market reports were released this week, both from MarketsandMarkets. The reporting company noted that the Small Satellite Market is projected to grow from $9.35 billion in 2025 to $32.13 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 28.0%. Increased demand for affordable space missions, more frequent launches, and expanded use in communications, Earth observation, and defense applications are all expected to contribute to the upswing.

One major factor is the expansion of LEO constellations for broadband and Earth observation. Increased government use of small satellites for ISR, PNT, and tactical communications is creating steady institutional demand. Additionally, falling manufacturing and launch costs are enabling shorter replacement cycles and more frequent satellite launches. The rising need for high-revisit data in downstream applications is further boosting the adoption of large, scalable small satellite constellations.

The fastest-growing segment in the small satellite market is the commercial sector, as more companies are using satellites for data and revenue-generating services. Commercial satellite operators, telecom firms, and service providers are deploying small satellite constellations to provide broadband connectivity, high-resolution Earth imagery, and continuous monitoring.

A subset of that market, the Earth Observation Small Satellite Market is projected to grow from $2.64 billion in 2025 to $5.52 billion by 2030 at a CAGR of 15.9%. The increasing need for high-frequency Earth observation data drives the EO small satellite market. This data supports planning across defense, environmental management, and commercial analytics.

The 222-2,650 pound mini satellite segment is expected to account for the largest market share in the EO small satellite market during the forecast period. The satellite bus segment is projected to account for the largest market share in the EO small satellite industry during the forecast period. The growth is driven by the increasing demand for modular, reliable, and power-efficient bus platforms.

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The FCC has granted a major authorization to Space Exploration Holdings to advance its second-generation Starlink satellite system, marking a significant milestone in global broadband connectivity.

Under this grant, SpaceX is authorized to construct, deploy, and operate an additional 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites, bringing the total to 15,000 satellites worldwide. This expansion will enable SpaceX to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet service globally, including enhanced mobile and supplemental coverage from space. The FCC’s decision benefited in particular from the work and collaboration provided by the Commerce Department and NTIA.

The FCC’s decision allows SpaceX to upgrade the Gen2 Starlink satellites with advanced form factors and cutting-edge technology; waive obsolete requirements that prevented overlapping beam coverage and enhanced capacity; add new orbital shells at altitudes ranging from 211 to about 300 miles, optimizing coverage and performance; and provide direct-to-cell connectivity outside the United States and supplemental coverage within the U.S., paving the way for next-generation mobile services.

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Eutelsat, meanwhile, has awarded a contract to Airbus to build an additional 340 OneWeb low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Together with the previous batch of 100 satellites procured in December 2024, the total number of satellites ordered is up to 440.

The satellites will be manufactured at Airbus Defense and Space’s Toulouse facility on a newly installed production line, with delivery beginning at the end of 2026.

Eutelsat’s OneWeb low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite network delivers high-speed, low-latency connectivity on a global basis. The availability of these latest satellites will assure full operational continuity for customers of the constellation, progressively replacing early batches coming to end of operational life.

Additionally, they will integrate technology upgrades including advanced digital channelizers, enabling enhanced onboard processing capabilities as well as greater efficiency and flexibility.

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A key milestone for future human spaceflight has been reached with the successful completion of shock and vibration tests on advanced, gravity-independent fuel cell technology developed by Nimbus Power Systems. The tests simulated the anticipated mechanical loads, including launch, for NASA’s upcoming Artemis crewed missions to the Moon. The fuel cell met all performance targets throughout the tests, demonstrating the system’s structural and operational readiness for future flight integration.

Fuel cells react oxygen and hydrogen to produce electricity, heat, and potable water, three vital resources for crewed space operations. Nimbus’ innovative water management technology removes product water via a combination of capillary and hydraulic forces that are uncompromised by the space environment.

Blue Origin currently licenses Nimbus Power System’s fuel cell technology for its Blue Moon Lunar Lander program and other space applications.

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In-Depth this week, CEOs are rewriting the rules of supply chains in an era defined not by efficiency, but by endurance. (Paywall)

Over the last decade, pandemics, geopolitical conflicts, cyber‑attacks, climate disruptions, and inflation have exposed the fragility of global supply systems—built for efficiency, not resilience. The result? Shipping delays, material shortages, and data breaches are now the norm.

Today’s leaders must think like engineers of continuity—not just maintainers of convenience. That means mapping vulnerabilities throughout the network and planning for “five disruptions from now,” not just the next quarter.

Africa is at the center of this shift. With 1.4 billion people and a young workforce, the continent has massive growth potential. But logistics inefficiencies add nearly 40% to the cost of doing business in parts of Africa. The African Continental Free Trade Area—AfCFTA—could boost intra‑continental trade from about 15% to over 50% by 2035, if countries invest in connectivity.

At the heart of this transformation is technology. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and IoT sensors are now tracking goods with surgical precision. But integration is key—automating outdated processes only speeds up failure.

Sustainability also matters. Supply chains contribute significantly to global carbon emissions, and for African firms, “green logistics” is becoming essential for accessing both climate finance and market opportunities.

• A new playbook for executives includes:

• Mapping dependencies and failure points;

• Digitizing operations with clear goals;

• Diversifying sourcing geographically;

• Embedding sustainability into performance metrics;

• Building agile, culturally aware teams;

• Partnering with governments to modernize trade infrastructure.

Supply chains, often called the circulatory system of modern civilization, are now the crucible of corporate leadership. For CEOs, success means not just moving goods, but connecting markets, people, and ideas—fortifying resilience for the next generation of global challenges.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Supply Chain tab. Other premium articles include a look at export controls and Space Commerce; factors contributing to the costs of small satellites; and how space insurance brokers assess risk.

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Private investment firm AE Industrial Partners has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling interest in the Space Propulsion and Power Systems business of L3Harris Technologies. The transaction encompasses business units across five locations in the U.S., which have developed the upper-stage rocket engines used in national security, civil and commercial missions for more than 60 years, as well as in-space propulsion, nuclear power and avionics assets.

L3Harris will retain a minority investment interest and continue to act as a strategic partner to the business. AE Industrial plans to restore and use the “Rocketdyne” name for the acquired business in recognition of its heritage and longstanding innovation within space propulsion technology.

AE Industrial Partners Managing Partner Kirk Konert said that in addition to restoring a legacy name to the commercial space industry, the acquisition is part of a new paradigm following a round of company consolidations over the past few decades.

“And now what we’re seeing is a kind of de-consolidation and new entrants being introduced into the market, and this is part of that theme in a new way, “Konert said. “Where L3, a prime, has been part of that consolidation over the past couple of decades is now partnering with a specialized investor such as AE Industrial to re-invigorate and stand alone a new platform in Rocketdyne which includes some of the key workhorses of propulsion for our space and national security programs here in the U.S.”

The partnership between AE Industrial and L3Harris will also aim to help accelerate the development of future propulsion technologies, including nuclear propulsion, which will be critical to the exploration of Mars and the cislunar domain. We’ll hear more about AE Industrial later in the program.

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The U.S. Space Development Agency (SDA) has named Rocket Lab as the prime contractor tasked with the design and manufacture of 18 satellites for the Tracking Layer Tranche 3 (TRKT3) program under the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The award, valued at $816 million, is the company’s largest single contract to date.

Under the contract Rocket Lab will deliver satellites equipped with advanced missile warning, tracking, and defense sensors to provide global, persistent detection and tracking of emerging missile threats, including hypersonic systems. The award includes an $806 million base contract plus up to $10.45 million in options. Each satellite will feature Rocket Lab’s next-generation Phoenix infrared sensor payload, a wide field-of-view (WFOV) solution designed to meet the evolving missile defense needs of national security in space. To ensure mission resilience, the satellites will be equipped with Rocket Lab’s advanced StarLite space protection sensors, designed to safeguard the constellation against directed energy threats. Notably, StarLite sensors have also been adopted by other prime contractors developing TRKT3 satellites, further expanding Rocket Lab’s role in the program

Rocket Lab’s satellites will be built on its proven Lightning platform, leveraging the company’s vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities to deliver an unmatched combination of speed, cost efficiency, and quality. All major components – from solar arrays, reaction wheels and star trackers to propulsion systems, avionics, payloads, and launch dispensers – are designed and produced in-house.

Rocket Lab’s growing role as a prime contractor for the U.S. Space Force highlights its emergence as a formidable competitor to legacy aerospace primes.

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The global satellite communication market, which was valued at $25.2 billion last year, is expected to grow from $27.6 billion this year to $47.6 billion in 2031 and $83 billion in 2035, at a CAGR of 13% during the forecast period. That’s according to a new report published by Global Market Insights.

The expansion of demand for internet connectivity, development of small satellite constellations to enhance communications, demand for remote area connectivity, increased demand for IoT & M2M Connectivity, and the integration of 5G with existing infrastructure and new technologies are several factors that propel satellite communications market growth.

The growing demand for reliable internet depends on satellite communications expanding into underserved areas. Programs Like NTIA’s Internet for All project highlight the need for equitable access to broadband. For example, in rural areas, over 72% of tribal broadband connectivity program funds were awarded to rural areas, which is why satellite communications is important to provide high-speed communications to areas where terrestrial infrastructure is not available.

The analysts found that the rapid expansion of satellite constellations is a key trend in the SATCOM market, as demand for worldwide high-speed broadband is a key factor driving this growth.

A partnership that could result in the first in-space advanced materials manufacturing facility for the manufacture of semiconductors has been announced by United Semiconductors and Aegis Aerospace.

The collaboration follows Aegis Aerospace’s recent grant agreement with the Texas Space Commission to develop an in-space manufacturing platform for advanced materials in low Earth orbit.

The Aegis Advanced Materials Manufacturing Platform (AMMP) aims to showcase the unique properties and manufacturing capabilities afforded by the microgravity environment of LEO. By leveraging United Semiconductors’ established expertise as a provider to the U.S. Department of War, this partnership will expedite the commercialization of semiconductor manufacturing in space. As a result, Aegis Aerospace anticipates creating new job opportunities in Texas and offering this innovative service globally.

Together, Aegis Aerospace’s AMMP and United Semiconductors products are believed to be the first dedicated commercial facility for in-space materials production.

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On our most recent edition of The Journal of Space Commerce podcast, Tom Patton talked with Kirk Konert, Managing Partner of AE Industrial Partners, a private investment firm focused on technologies and services considered critical to aerospace and national and economic security. The company was founded in 1998 by father-son team Brian and David Rowe, and currently manages $7.2 billion in assets from their headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.

AE Industrial Partners supports multiple verticals in the commercial space sector, with several companies involved in the space supply chain. Company co-founder Brian Rowe came from GE Aviation, and the company still is interested in things that fly, and things that make things fly.

The company has also invested in such firms as Firefly Aerospace, York Space Systems, Redwire and others. In fact, Konert said that AEI has been the most active private investment firm in space over the past several years.

“We believe space has been at an inflection point in industrialization, where it’s become a key part of our economy and infrastructure for driving our economy globally. And without space as a backbone of that infrastructure our modern day economy sort of collapses at this point.”

The company says it makes investments to positively impact its target markets, portfolio companies and the communities within which they operate. Each investment has unique characteristics which requires a flexible approach to meet the needs of all stakeholders.

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In depth this week (paywall), Jared Isaacman was confirmed December 17th as NASA Administrator, and the next day, President Trump issued an executive order dissolving the National Space Council and mandating Americans return to the Moon by 2028. That timing wasn’t accidental. Together, these moves signal a coordinated restructuring of American space policy, shifting power from traditional aerospace contractors toward commercial providers and fundamentally rewriting the rules for who profits from space exploration.

Before confirmation hearings even began, a 62-page document titled “Project Athena” leaked to Politico, revealing Isaacman’s vision in remarkably blunt terms. The plan sorts NASA programs into three categories: accelerate, fix, or delete. That last category has congressional offices scrambling.

Project Athena pulls no punches on legacy programs. The Space Launch System—NASA’s heavy-lift rocket that has cost approximately $24 billion in development and flown once—would terminate after Artemis III and potentially Artemis IV. The lunar Gateway space station, consuming years of international partnership development, would be canceled entirely. In their place, Isaacman proposes accelerating commercial lunar landers and focusing deep-space ambitions on Mars missions powered by nuclear electric propulsion. And the plan reserves particularly sharp criticism for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, calling its cost-plus contract structure “outdated” and suggesting JPL should compete like any other contractor rather than receive directed funding.

Beyond program cuts, Project Athena targets NASA’s organizational structure. The plan proposes consolidating mission control operations at Johnson Space Center in Houston, potentially stripping responsibilities from other centers. It calls for comprehensive reviews of center “modernization”—language that typically precedes workforce reductions and facility closures. Isaacman’s vision isn’t just about changing which rockets NASA flies; it restructures how the agency operates, shifting from in-house development toward contract oversight.

Our in-depth report looks at the ramifications for the commercial space industry given Isaacman’s vision for NASA, and the impacts of Trump’s most recent executive order related to the agency. Where budgets are concerned, the Trump administration’s proposed FY2026 NASA budget included significant cuts that space policy publications described as potentially “devastating” to specific programs. While final appropriations always differ from initial proposals—Congress historically adds funding back for programs like Artemis—the direction is clear: legacy programs face pressure while commercial partnerships receive emphasis.

Near-term decisions in this year will determine which programs survive. SLS production for missions beyond Artemis IV requires funding decisions in the next appropriations cycle. Gateway hardware currently under construction either continues, or faces cancellation penalties. Commercial lunar lander providers either receive follow-on contracts or watch NASA’s architecture shift to alternatives. Each choice cascades into workforce planning, facility utilization, and supplier relationships across the industrial base.

Isaacman told CNBC shortly after confirmation that Americans will return to the Moon within Trump’s term—a promise representing either bold confidence or unrealistic optimism depending on how much organizational inertia he overcomes. Either way, the transformation he’s initiating represents the most significant restructuring of America’s space program since NASA’s founding, with winners and losers becoming apparent well before that lunar landing occurs.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the “In Depth” tab. And while you’re there, paid subscribers can also read about Amazon’s “LEO” gamble, the risks of going “Fabless”, and what happens ground stations become a data bottleneck.

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Worth a Second Look:

• First Nine Satellite Structures for the SDA Tranche 2 Tracking Layer Completed by Sierra Space

• Space Florida Marks $6 Billion in the Statewide Space Project Pipeline

• Third 3rd COSMO-SkyMed 2nd Generation Satellite Successfully Launched

• NASA Migrating EO Data to Commercial Cloud Environment

• Investment will Advance Reusable Rockets

Entrepreneur Jarad Isaacman has been confirmed as the next Administrator of NASA. The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 67-30 in favor of the nomination.

Isaacman was first nominated for the job by President Donald Trump in December, 2024, and he appeared to be headed for an easy confirmation. But that was derailed when the nomination was abruptly withdrawn in late May while the confirmation process was underway.

Trump re-nominated Isaacman in November, and facing little if any opposition in the Senate, his confirmation is now official.

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The Florida state budget for FY26 proposed by Governor Ron DeSantis underscores his stated commitment to strengthening Florida’s aerospace sector as it enters a new era of growth. The Governor’s FY26 budget recommendations for Space Florida include $17.5 million in the operating budget and a total of $21 million for strategic, substantive aerospace project investments.

Space Florida is a public corporation and innovation connector created by the legislature to facilitate creative financing options and infrastructure access to space companies to the state.

The Governor’s budget recommendations for FY26 include investments designed to accelerate industry advancement, modernize and expand space transportation infrastructure, and ensure Florida remains competitive in an increasingly dynamic global space marketplace.

In addition to providing over $93 million through the FDOT Spaceport Improvement Program, the Fiscal Year 2026-27 Budget recommends $10 million to engage the Aerospace Investment Fund in maximizing growth in Florida’s statewide space strategy alongside commercial investments.

The space industry in Florida generates more than $9 billion in economic impact potential across all private sector aerospace projects.

The state legislature must approve the budget during its annual session early next year, and all of that funding is not guaranteed to make it through the legislative process.

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Speaking of Space Florida, the agency, in conjunction with Seraphim Space, has launched the SpaceTech Investor Readiness Program, a partnership designed to accelerate innovation and investment across Florida’s growing SpaceTech ecosystem.

Seraphim has a portfolio of 148 companies across 32 countries, including five unicorns, that have collectively raised over $8.2 billion in funding. Seraphim and Space Florida will help connect Florida-based startups with investors and key partners to drive growth and investment readiness.

The pilot program brings experienced investors together with seven high-potential Florida-based SpaceTech startups, helping them become investment-ready, while connecting them to Seraphim’s global investor network, strategic corporate partners, and the broader Florida space ecosystem. The program also educates local investors on opportunities within the state’s growing SpaceTech sector.

The pilot will culminate with a showcase at SpaceCom Orlando in January, highlighting the companies and the program’s impact on Florida’s innovation landscape.

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When Rocket Lab launched the “Raise and Shine” mission December 15, it carried a demonstration of orbital debris mitigation technology developed by Axelspace. D-SAIL is a deorbiting device designed to shorten the time a satellite remains in orbit after the termination of its operation.

The demonstration is part of a JAXA program named ‘Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration-4’. The D-SAIL demonstration on the RApid Innovative payload demonstration SatellitE-4 (RAISE-4) mission is scheduled to begin in late 2026, about a year after launch. This will mark the first time that D-SAIL is operated in orbit.

The D-SAIL membrane deploys to increase atmospheric drag, gradually reducing the satellite’s altitude and eventually causing the spacecraft to enter the atmosphere.

This year, the FCC enacted rules requiring operators to dispose of their LEO satellites within five years of completing their missions, in a effort to mitigate the accumulation of space debris.

The Global Space Power Supply Market was valued at $3.3 billion in 2024 and is estimated to grow to $7.3 billion by 2034 at a CAGR of 8.2%, according to a new report from Global Market Insights.

The market growth is propelled by increasing satellite launches, improvements in photovoltaic technologies, rising demand for CubeSats and small satellites, and the growing push toward sustainability. The acceleration of commercial missions and the demand for efficient power systems to support various types of satellite operations continue to create long-term opportunities. Rapid satellite deployment, especially in the form of large constellations for communication, earth monitoring, and navigation applications, adds to the demand.

North America leads the global landscape due to its advanced aerospace ecosystem, substantial funding support, cutting-edge research investments, and early adoption of AI in national defense infrastructure. The market is also gaining from strategic collaborations between public agencies and private space technology developers.

The low power segment accounted for $939.8 million in 2024. This category thrives due to its compatibility with compact satellites and short-term missions. The solar power systems segment reached $2 billion in 2024. This growth is linked to the rising use of clean energy sources, maturing photovoltaic technologies, and the advantage of uninterrupted solar exposure in space.

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Investments in three frontier technology companies that are positioned at the center of what could be a fundamental shift in how America builds, powers, and operates critical infrastructure beyond Earth’s surface have been announced by Balerion Space Ventures.

The investments in Antares Industries, Samara Aerospace, and Valar Atomics signal the intensifying convergence of space, defense, and industrial-scale energy systems, sectors that are increasingly recognized as foundational to U.S. competitiveness and national security.

Balerion’s investment will support product development, facility expansion, and key commercial milestone achievements as each company deepens engagement with defense, civil, and commercial customers.

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Imagine this: When SpaceX launched the Transporter-15 mission, it carried 140 payloads from over 30 customers in 16 countries onto a single Falcon 9. Some satellites even hosted payloads from other companies. It’s rideshares carrying rideshares—sharing all the way down.

In depth this week: Welcome to the sharing economy in space (paywall). The old model—build your own satellite, buy your own launch, and operate your own ground stations—is quietly dying.

The hosted payload market reached $2.1 billion in 2024, and is projected to hit $6.8 billion by 2033. Mega-constellations are rapidly expanding, and are forecast to account for $4.27 billion toward $27.3 billion in market share by 2032. The economics are simple. Why pay $50 to $150 million for a dedicated launch when you can rideshare a 440-pound satellite for a few million? Why build global ground networks when Leaf Space, KSAT, or Atlas sell contact time by the minute? And why design custom buses when EnduroSat or K2 Space offer standardized platforms?

SpaceX’s Transporter program has launched over 1,000 smallsats since 2021. Transporter-15 showcased the maturity of the concept, deploying dozens of satellites, including CubeSats, tech demos, and orbital transfer vehicles, to custom orbits.

Orbital tugs like D-Orbit’s ION and Momentus’ Vigoride solve rideshare’s big limit: everyone starts in the same orbit. They deliver satellites precisely, like catching an Uber after the bus. K2 Space’s Mega platforms raise massive payloads from LEO to MEO fast and efficiently.

Ground Segment as a Service turns capex into opex—pay only for passes used, with reliable networks handling thousands monthly.

The demand is only expected to continue to grow. SpaceX does launch its own satellites on its own rockets, and Rocket Lab builds both rockets and satellites. But that company also has a solid business case for dedicated and rideshare missions. But most operators of satellite constellations depend on commercial launch operators to carry their payloads to orbit. Many use SpaceX, Amazon Leo, previously Project Kuiper, is riding to orbit aboard ULA launch vehicles, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn reusable heavy lift rocket could also become a SpaceX competitor for rideshare missions.

North America leads today, but Asia Pacific is catching up fast. By orbit, LEO dominates for lower latency and costs for applications like satellite-delivered Internet, as well as voice and video connectivity.

Do tradeoffs exist? Of course they do. Booking a rideshare mission means less schedule control, orbital compromises without tugs, potential ground access constraints, and security risks for sensitive missions.

Yet for most operators, sharing wins—slashing costs and accelerating access. It’s democratizing access to space, though increasing orbital congestion emphasizes the need for better traffic management.

So, like software two decades ago, the satellite industry is embracing shared infrastructure for routine missions. Dedicated systems remain for the edges—but the future is shared.

Paid subscribers can read the full analysis on The Journal of Space Commerce under the Market Insights tab. And while you’re there, check out our in-depth reports coming regulatory changes for the commercial space industry, and the future for orbital data centers.

And that is Space Commerce Week for Sunday, December 21. We’ll be away for the Christmas and New Year’s break, but Space Commerce Week will return on January 11. Have a great holiday season.

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U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has announced the appointment of Taylor Jordan as Director of the Office of Space Commerce (OSC), underscoring the Trump Administration’s commitment to strengthening U.S. leadership in space commerce. Mr. Jordan will continue to serve concurrently as assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation and prediction at NOAA.

Jordan brings more than 15 years of space policy and operational experience to the role. He previously served nearly a decade on the staff of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology as the committee’s subject-matter expert on NOAA, environmental satellites, and civil space programs. In that capacity, he was the lead author of the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017.

During President Trump’s first term, Mr. Jordan served as a senior policy advisor at NOAA, where he supported the agency’s satellite programs and provided strategic oversight of major space-system acquisitions. Most recently, he was a principal at Innovative Federal Strategies, advising commercial space and technology companies on legislative and executive-branch engagement.

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Advanced nuclear energy startup Antares has closed a $96 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Shine Capital, with participation from Alt Capital, Caffeinated, FiftyThree Stations, Industrious, and other investors. The round consists of $71 million in new equity capital and $25 million in debt for equipment, factory build-out, and uranium procurement.

Founded just over two years ago, Antares has made rapid progress in technology maturation. The company has raised over $130 million in funding to date and put those resources to work building out a 145,000-square-foot facility in Torrance, California, capable of producing 10 units per year. Antares has also secured contracts with the United States Air Force, Space Force, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and NASA to advance its technology.

Antares CEO Jordan Bramble said the new capital will fuel the company’s mission to deliver safe, reliable, and scalable nuclear power solutions. Over the summer, the company conducted an electrically-heated demonstration of its reactor in partnership with NASA at their Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Antares plans to propose on NASA’s Fission Surface Power program, which aims to deliver 100 kWe of nuclear power on the lunar surface by 2030.

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Funding has been secured by ICEYE to accelerate the company’s delivery of sovereign satellite systems and data intelligence services. The new financing, led by General Catalyst, has broad pan-European participation.

ICEYE has secured the equivalent of some $174 million in new funding, as well as a secondary placement of about $58 million, valuing the company at $2.8 billion. The Series E round was led by General Catalyst, with strong pan-European participation.

The new capital builds on ICEYE’s strong momentum, powering the continued growth of its SAR constellation and the accelerated deployment of sovereign satellite systems, advanced sensing capabilities, and data intelligence services.

SAR uses radar pulses that pierce clouds, smoke, and darkness, providing a continuous view of the Earth that supports rapid response for defense and intelligence, security, disaster response and recovery, insurance, maritime monitoring, and finance.

ICEYE is accelerating the shift to software-defined satellites with its fourth-generation platform, which delivers the world’s highest-fidelity commercial SAR imagery of up to 16 cm. With 62 satellites successfully launched to date, the company plans to scale up to an average production rate of one satellite per week starting next year, deploying sovereign space capability for allied nations at unprecedented speed and scale.

Under the leadership of High-Tech Gründerfonds, Marble has successfully closed its oversubscribed $6.2 million seed round, exceeding initial funding targets. The funding supports Marble in scaling operations, accelerating product and technological developments for its upcoming satellite constellation. The first Marble satellite is scheduled for a 2026 launch.

This marks another major milestone for the company founded in August 2023, following more than $11.6 million in non-dilutive funding and the signing of Marble’s first anchor contract with ESA valued at about $3.5 million.

Marble momentum is also reflected in the latest outcomes of last week’s ESA Ministerial Council 2025 in Bremen. Member states of the European Space Agency committed to a total budget of $25.67 billion for the next three years – the highest funding level in ESA’s history. Particularly encouraging is Germany’s decision to increase its contribution to nearly $6 billion, making it the largest contributor.

High-Tech Gründerfonds is one of the leading and most active early-stage investors in Germany and Europe. Its fund investors include numerous corporations and family offices, as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and KfW Capital. In addition, Marble has attracted a strong group of further investors who share the mission.

The investment will enable Marble to significantly scale its development team and accelerate completion of its intelligence, maritime, and trafficability tools – solutions that already serve early customers and are now being prepared for broad commercial rollout. It will also support the build-out of Marble’s end-to-end data-processing chain and customer data portal.

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In brief, the Commercial Space Federation (CSF) has announced its four newest members to its Space Supply Chain Council (S2C2): McCollister’s, MERC Aerospace, Space Markets, and Vivace. Together, these small and medium-sized space businesses represent a diverse cross-section of the commercial space industrial base, from logistics and innovative engineering to marketplace infrastructure and next-generation space technologies.

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This week’s company spotlight features D-Oribt (paywall), which has established itself as Europe’s leading space logistics company by delivering over 200 payloads to orbit through 21 commercial missions of its proprietary ION Satellite Carrier platform. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Milan, Italy, the company has evolved from a New Space startup into a critical infrastructure provider for the rapidly expanding satellite industry.

D-Orbit operates at the intersection of space transportation and logistics, providing what it describes as “last-mile delivery” services for satellites launched on rideshare missions. The company’s core offering centers on the ION Satellite Carrier, a configurable orbital transfer vehicle that transports satellites from their initial deployment orbit to precise operational slots, dramatically reducing the time and cost for satellite operators to begin revenue-generating operations. Unlike traditional rideshare launches that deploy all payloads into a single orbit, D-Orbit’s ION platform uses electric propulsion to maneuver between orbital altitudes and inclinations, delivering each customer’s satellite to its specific destination.​

The company’s business model encompasses four primary revenue streams: precision deployment services for satellites requiring customized orbits, in-orbit demonstration (IOD) services for technology testing, hosted payload services for customers who need orbital access without building complete spacecraft, and mission control as a service.

The ION Satellite Carrier represents D-Orbit’s core technological asset—a satellite platform with a configurable payload bay that can accommodate various combinations of launch dispensers, CubeSat-sized payloads, microsatellites, and instruments for in-orbit testing. The platform employs electric propulsion systems that enable precise orbital maneuvers while maintaining fuel efficiency for extended mission durations. ION’s modular architecture allows D-Orbit to customize each vehicle for specific mission requirements, whether deploying a constellation of small satellites or hosting technology demonstration payloads.​

The orbital transfer vehicle market is experiencing rapid growth driven by the proliferation of satellite constellations and increasing demand for on-orbit services. Market research firm GM Insights estimates the OTV market was valued at $1.70 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $3.98 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of 15.2%. This expansion reflects fundamental changes in satellite deployment economics, where rideshare launches have reduced launch costs but created new demand for precise orbital delivery services.​​

D-Orbit competes in this market against both established aerospace primes and emerging New Space companies. Primary competitors include Impulse Space, founded by SpaceX’s first employee Tom Mueller and recently securing $300 million in funding for high-energy orbital transfer capabilities, Momentus Inc., which has faced operational and regulatory challenges, Rocket Lab USA, leveraging its Photon spacecraft platform for OTV missions, and Starfish Space, focusing on satellite servicing and life extension. Traditional aerospace companies including Sierra Space, ArianeGroup, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are also developing OTV capabilities.​

D-Orbit’s competitive advantage rests on its operational track record—21 completed commercial missions and over 200 payloads successfully deployed represent more flight heritage than most competitors have achieved.

D-Orbit’s growth trajectory depends on several converging market trends and company-specific execution factors. The overall orbital transfer vehicle market’s projected growth from $1.70 billion in 2024 to $3.98 billion by 2030 provides substantial total addressable market expansion. Increasing regulatory requirements for debris mitigation and end-of-life disposal create demand for D-Orbit’s deorbiting capabilities. The company’s operational track record, strategic partnerships, and positioning within European space programs provide advantages as the space logistics market matures from experimental to essential infrastructure.​​

Paid subscribers can read the full article on The Journal of Space Commerce under the “Capital and Investment” tab.

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It wasn’t exactly the hot seat, but Jarad Isaacman was back in front of the United States Senate Commerce Committee to answer questions about his qualifications to be the next administrator of NASA.

Isaacman had been tapped by President Donald Trump in December, 2024 for the post during the transition period, and Isaacman appeared to be headed for easy confirmation with bipartisan support. But his nomination was abruptly withdrawn by Trump in May, who said Isaacman was a “true blue Democrat” who did not support the America First agenda. He later said that Isaacman was a good friend of Elon Musk, with whom Trump had had a political falling out.

Such is politics in the 21st century.

The renomination came in November, and the first confirmation hearing was held Wednesday morning.

Isaacman has had strong bipartisan support throughout the process, and that support did not appear to be wavering. Committee Chairman Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, was effusive in his praise for the entrepreneur-turned-astronaut.

“Mr. Isaacman, I know you are as committed to American supremacy in the final frontier as is this committee and the entire Senate,” Cruz said during his opening remarks. “The United States must remain the unquestioned leader in space exploration. And this imperative is why we need to confirm your nomination as expeditiously as possible. My hope is that you’ll be confirmed and in this role before the end of this year”

Isaacman’s answers to Senators’ questions were very similar to those he gave the first time around. He reiterated his belief that private industry will be an essential partner for NASA in what is widely seen as the new space race with China, as has always been the case with the agency.

“A lot of people do believe generally these are, these are new developments. But in reality, going back to the 1960s in the space race, NASA worked alongside some of our great aerospace companies. I mean, whether it was Boeing or McDonnell Douglas and Northrop, for sure, sir. So a lot of those names are still very relevant within the space program today,” Isaacman said. “And then there’s also a lot of new names that is, referred to sometimes as new space or commercial space. I think it’s going to take, you know, the contributions of the many to do the near impossible. Now, where NASA can play a role is consistent in the past, which is sharing its expertise and talent to help these new companies. When NASA does tend to figure out the near impossible, and it’s mature enough technology to hand it off to industry where innovation can improve upon the capability and lower cost, that’s a great outcome.”

No date has been set for either a full committee vote or a vote by the full Senate, but given the tone of Senator Cruz’ remarks, we will likely see a decision on Isaacman’s nomination before the holidays.

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Following the release of the draft EU Space Act and the accompanying Vision for a European Space Economy, the Office of Space Commerce, in coordination with the Department of State, solicited feedback and comments from US Government agencies and commercial stakeholders on the legislation’s potential impact on the United States. This consultation included input from U.S. trade associations representing a broad cross-section of the U.S. commercial space industry, as well as over 70 responding companies that have active or potential future commercial interests in the EU market.

In its comments, the OCS said that “As a general matter, the United States expresses deep concern regarding measures in the proposed Act that would impose unacceptable regulatory burdens on U.S. providers of space services to European customers. As close partners in civil, commercial, and security aspects of space cooperation for decades, the EU should proceed cautiously when developing and refining the proposed EU Space Act to ensure it provides a permissive and adaptable framework that promotes innovation, investment, and fair competition for the U.S., EU, and EU member states commercial sectors, while respecting each other’s sovereignty. Otherwise, the ability of the United States, the EU, and EU members to maintain government-to-government burden-sharing partnerships could be threatened.”

The letter went onto say that “the current draft EU Space Act contradicts the spirit of the comments made in August on the U.S.-EU Framework Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade to “resolve trade imbalances, improve market access, increase our trade and investment relationship, and reduce or eliminate non-tariff barriers.”

The U.S. requested several changes in the draft EU Space Act, including alignment with existing international and industry guidelines, standards, and rules for space systems and operations that have been developed by international consensus. The comments also requested a significant increase in the information and clarity in the text of the EU Space Act itself, rather than waiting for subsequent implementing acts. That would mean that stakeholders and EU member states themselves are fully aware of implications ahead of its adoption, rather than assigning oversight functions to Commission officials in Brussels.

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Space traffic management (STM) functions aboard the Pathfinder A 16U pilot satellite for ESA’s upcoming Celeste In-Orbit Demonstration constellation will be provided by Neuraspace under a contract with CubeSat manufacturer German Orbital Systems. The mission is designed to demonstrate Low Earth Orbit Positioning, Navigation and Timing, or PNT capabilities.

As part of this STM service package, Neuraspace will provide real-time automated solutions for conjunction screening, analysis, and classification, as well as maneuver planning and optimization. In addition, the launch and early operations phase (LEOP) will be supported with GNSS data processing and dedicated tracking using the company’s optical telescopes.

These services by Neuraspace will also contribute towards compliance to ESA’s space debris requirements, with the intention to control collision risk and prevent space debris release and proliferation.

Scheduled to be launched in the first quarter of 2026, the satellite will fly in LEO to demonstrate how PNT signals can ultimately provide guaranteed location accuracy, better signal robustness, increased resistance as well as faster signal acquisition.

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An agreement has been reached between Optimum Technologies and Blue Origin to integrate the OpTech next-generation Caracal optical payload onboard the first mission of Blue Ring. Blue Ring’s first mission is expected to launch in 2026 with initial injection into Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO) and additional services performed in Geostationary Orbit (GEO).

The Blue Ring vehicle will demonstrate its ability to simultaneously support the GEO tracking and custody mission as well as space object characterization, leveraging dynamic maneuverability to support high-resolution characterization.

The Caracal sensor is designed to provide actionable insights on resident space objects and orbital activity and includes onboard image storage, object detection algorithms, and passive thermal control. The payload is designed to operate flexibly across dynamic orbits over a year-long mission profile. Caracal will fly with Scout Space’s Owl sensor, along with internally developed payloads, all demonstrating Blue Ring as a platform for supporting future GEO space domain awareness missions.

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A pair of agreements with Cosmoserve and the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force will help solidify Dawn Aerospace’s position in the orbital refueling space.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Dawn and Cosmoserve at Space Tech Expo in Bremen, Germany to partner on enabling sustainable and scalable in-space servicing through refueling and debris removal technologies. The strategic MoU expresses both parties’ intent to explore future collaboration on integrating Dawn’s refuelable propulsion systems and in-space refueling service ‘Loop’ with Cosmoserve’s debris capture and removal missions.

By combining Dawn Aerospace’s refueling and propulsion capabilities with Cosmoserve’s debris-removal platforms, the partnership aims to enhance mission endurance and reduce the environmental impact of space activity.

A separate agreement between Dawn and the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force will see Dawn provide its SatDrive propulsion system for the flagship PAMI-1 mission. Critically, the propulsion system will be equipped with Dawn’s Docking and Fluid Transfer (DFT) port, providing the Netherlands with its first sovereign satellite capable of being serviced and refueled in orbit.

The PAMI-1 mission is the first of six satellites that form a constellation in Low Earth Orbit, with plans for further expansion.

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In depth this week we took a look at the supply chain for spacecraft optics and sensors. The global market for optics and sensors represents a critical bottleneck in space commerce, valued at $7.44 billion in 2024 and projected to reach just over $13 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 5.4 percent.

This Tier 2 component and subsystem segment produces specialized optical instruments and detection systems essential to all space missions, from satellite positioning and Earth observation to scientific research and communication. The supply chain exhibits significant geographic concentration, single-source dependencies for critical materials like germanium, and extended lead times that create strategic vulnerabilities for satellite manufacturers and constellation operators.

Optics and sensors are precision-engineered subsystems that integrate into complete satellites and space vehicles produced by prime contractors. North America dominates the space sensors market with a market share of just over 40 percent in 2024, driven by expanding satellite constellations and U.S. government investments in space domain awareness capabilities. The commercial segment demonstrates the highest growth trajectory through 2032, fueled by rising demand for space tourism, telecommunications, and data transmission services from government and private space agencies.​​

But digging a little deeper into the supply chain, germanium and silicon represent critical materials for infrared optics and sensors used in satellite payloads and thermal imaging systems. The germanium supply chain exhibits extreme concentration, with China accounting for more than 98 percent of global production and recent export restrictions creating significant disruptions for Western defense manufacturers.​​

Product categories within the optics and sensors segment include imaging systems for Earth observation, scientific instruments for space exploration, navigation star trackers, communication optical terminals, and thermal infrared sensors. Lead times for custom-designed optical systems typically range from 18 to 36 months from initial design through space qualification, with procurement of base materials extending an additional 12 to 18 months. Batch sizes remain typically small to medium in volume.

Going forward, design standardization across satellite constellation programs could reduce custom manufacturing requirements and improve supplier economies of scale. Vertical integration of germanium production and optical coating capabilities by satellite integrators could secure supply chains and reduce dependency on specialized suppliers. And, material efficiency improvements through precision manufacturing and additive manufacturing for component housings could reduce waste by 15 to 25 percent.

The full report is available for paid subscribers on The Journal of Space Commerce under the In-Depth tab. And while you’re there, check out our investor spotlight on NorthStar Earth & Space, a Montreal-based company backed by $35 million in private equity funding.

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