Space Commerce Week

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has changed the designs and flight plans for both commercial landers in its Artemis program. The goal is still a crewed Moon landing in 2028. The changes cover landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX. NASA laid them out a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The biggest shift is in the mission order. Artemis III won’t land. Instead, four astronauts will stay in low Earth orbit next summer and practice docking the Orion capsule with test versions of both landers. NASA officials said Artemis IV is now the mission planned to put crew on the surface. Neither company’s been assigned to that landing. Artemis program manager Jeremy Parsons said NASA will hold that decision as long as it can. “The uncrewed demonstrations for us are gonna provide critical operations to reduce risk for our initial surface mission. It’s gonna allow us to learn how do we start and restop cryogenic engines on the moon rather than hypergolic. We’re gonna understand kind of the conditions of the regolith at the South Pole, plume conditions and surface interaction, thermal performance of the landers, and really is gonna be a critical stepping stone to the eventual lunar landing. If all goes according to plan, we’ll also have a lunar terrain vehicle on the lunar surface by the time the first Artemis astronauts arrive near the South Pole, giving us additional options as the moon base begins to take shape,” Parsons said. “NASA and we intend to wait as long as possible to make a decision about which provider is ultimately going to provide the first American astronauts back to the moon in 2028. And so this is, again, really trying to go along with them in the development cycle, and we have dedicated teams working hand in hand with both providers, marching along the way, doing everything we can to accelerate. Regardless of who goes first, both providers are planning for lunar landing missions in 2028.” Both companies must fly an uncrewed demonstration mission before NASA’s crewed landings. And both landers will reach lunar orbit differently than first planned. SpaceX’s Starship lander will wait for Orion in Earth orbit. The two will dock there. Then Starship will fire its engines to push the combined stack to low lunar orbit. NASA says it’s modifying Orion for that push. SpaceX still plans to refuel Starship in orbit. A figure of 22 refueling flights was floated at a panel discussion the day prior to the news conference. Parsons said NASA isn’t tracking that high, and that six to eight flights is closer to what SpaceX is planning. He said early, conservative estimates put propellant loss during transfer at 5 to 10 percent. Blue Origin is skipping propellant transfer. It’ll use three transfer stages to carry its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander to an elliptical polar orbit. On schedule, NASA officials said Artemis III is running 90 days behind. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the work ahead includes a tanking test of the rocket at the end of this year. Parsons tied the delay to the supply chain. “So right now it’s supply chain for the lunar builds that are really kind of driving it. And so kind of what you’ve seen in terms of the broader industrial supply base right now is you have a number of components that, you know, may get outclassed for certain DOW builds, you know, that are kind of higher rated,” Parsons said. Parsons said avionics is the key item. He also said Blue Origin is returning its New Glenn rocket to flight after an incident in May, and is aiming to restart pad operations in November. The baseline Artemis III mission runs 14 days and can stretch to 17. Blue Origin’s test lander launches first, on New Glenn. Orion follows on the Space Launch System, or SLS, and docks with the lander. The crew will go inside. Starship launches later from Florida and docks with Orion for about two hours. The crew won’t enter Starship. There are hardware changes, too. NASA’s adding a stretch Centaur upper stage as an option for SLS, alongside the existing upper stage. Parsons said it carries about 50 percent more propellant than the standard Centaur. NASA moved to Centaur from the Exploration Upper Stage after it lost confidence that stage could meet its timelines, cost and schedule. NASA and Axiom Space are also developing a second spacesuit configuration for early missions. Parsons said it cuts suit mass from a little over 500 pounds to about 250. Parsons said avionics is currently the item driving the Artemis III schedule. The agency expects to choose between the two SLS upper stages around next summer, near the time of Artemis III. -0- The European Space Agency, or ESA, has picked OHB System to lead feasibility and preliminary design studies for shared infrastructure on the lunar surface. OHB System, a subsidiary of Germany’s OHB SE, announced the award Monday. The project’s called OASIS. That’s short for Outpost for Advanced Scientific Investigation Station. OHB says OASIS would supply power, communications and data storage to multiple payloads. Instead of each mission building and flying its own systems, future payloads could use shared services. Energy generated and stored during the lunar day is meant to keep payloads running through the roughly two-week lunar night. The company says that could cut the complexity, mass and cost of future lunar missions. OHB is prime contractor and is responsible for the overall system concept. It’s working with as-yet unnamed partners on system requirements and the preliminary design phase. OHB describes the concept as modular and scalable, built to host science instruments, technology demonstrators and robotic systems. In the current reference architecture, Europe’s Argonaut lunar lander would deliver the infrastructure on an Ariane 6 rocket. Communications and data relay would run through Moonlight, Europe’s planned lunar communications infrastructure, starting with Lunar Pathfinder. The concept would move power and communications off individual mission budgets and onto shared hardware. -0- NVIDIA plans to take a minority stake in Reflex Aerospace , a German satellite platform maker. Reflex says the money will help expand its production in Bavaria. Reflex is based in Berlin and Munich. The company says the funds also will support development of its platform architecture, with a focus on onboard processing. NVIDIA would join existing investors Alpine Space Ventures, Human Element, Bayern Kapital and HTGF. The planned investment follows Reflex’s Series A round in November 2025. That round raised about 56 million dollars, or 50 million euros. Reflex builds mid-sized satellites for low Earth orbit constellations. It adapts them to customer payloads for Earth observation, intelligence, space domain awareness and communications missions. The company says it typically needs nine to 12 months from order to delivery of the first satellite of a new design. It compares that with two to four years for traditional satellite programs. Reflex ties its strategy to Europe’s security needs, with manufacturing in Germany and sovereign control over its supply chain, manufacturing and operations. CEO Walter Ballheimer said the company’s platform work includes designs for very-high-resolution stereo imaging and orbital data center constellations. The deal pairs a major processor supplier with a European platform builder focused on onboard computing. The investment hasn’t closed yet. Cowboy Space Corp. has unveiled the upper stage of its Big Iron rocket. It’s designed to stay in orbit and operate as a megawatt-class data center. The San Carlos, California, company was formerly known as Aetherflux. It also introduced Big Iron Express, a commercial launch program for outside customers that need megawatt-class power in orbit for computing or other uses. The same upper stage will be designed to carry their payloads, configured for each mission. Cowboy Space is targeting 2028 for Big Iron’s first flight. After that, it plans to scale up its Stamped… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

The U.S. State Department is putting five million dollars into a new program meant to build space partnerships between the United States and other countries. It’s called Project Constellation . The goal is a long-term platform that connects governments, industry, academia, entrepreneurs and international organizations, and builds capacity in emerging space economies. Planned activities include commercial diplomacy, fellowships, pitch competitions, study tours, innovation showcases and investor engagement. There’ll also be discussions on regulatory alignment, space law and policy, and workforce development. The program supports the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna. The award was announced at the second annual U.S. Space Forum, held Oct. 15 and 16 at the Vienna International Center. The grant goes to the Commercial Space Federation, or C-S-F, along with partners Meridian International and SPACEAIMS. C-S-F will lead the commercial space side of the program. That means assessing partner countries’ priorities and readiness, and connecting emerging space programs with U.S. companies and supply chains. The group says it’ll use convenings, exchanges and delegations to find openings for procurement and long-term business partnerships. Wells Griffith, the U.S. ambassador to the Mission in Vienna, said the program offers other nations pathways into the U.S. space ecosystem. He also pointed to a separate State Department effort, the Space Catalyst Partnership, which pairs diplomatic outreach with industry engagement. -0- Private investment in space companies hit 20-point-8 billion dollars in the third quarter. That’s according to the latest quarterly investment tracker from Seraphim Space. The total’s more than two and a half times the previous quarterly high of eight billion dollars, set in the first quarter. Trailing 12-month investment reached 40-point-1 billion dollars. One deal drove nearly half of it. Blue Origin raised 10 billion dollars in what the report called its first outside funding round. Take that out, and the quarter came in at 10-point-8 billion dollars. The money concentrated at the top. The 10 largest rounds took 78 percent of the capital deployed, up from 57 percent in the second quarter. They included Hadrian’s one-point-37 billion dollar Series D, Stoke Space’s one billion dollar Series E and K2 Space’s 500 million dollar Series D. Seraphim counted 216 deals in all. Series D and later rounds more than doubled year to date, from 20 to 43. Space access companies, a category that covers launch, spacecraft manufacturing, suppliers and satellite operations, drew 16-point-4 billion dollars across 120 deals. Without Blue Origin, that’s six-point-4 billion. Downstream applications went the other way. They fell to 400 million dollars across 40 deals, down from one-point-1 billion dollars in the second quarter. Public markets lagged. Planet Labs, AST SpaceMobile and Rocket Lab each fell more than 30 percent during the quarter, following SpaceX’s initial public offering in June. The report said SpaceX’s share price recovered late in the quarter. Chinese companies closed 49 deals worth three-point-3 billion dollars, topping their previous high of 35. That money reached beyond launch and satellite constellations into space-domain awareness, orbital logistics, return vehicles and in-space computing. In Europe, deal count over the past 12 months fell to 133 from 169, while investment rose from one-point-5 billion to five-point-3 billion dollars. Four deals with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, were announced in the quarter. They involve Ursa Major, Astro Digital, Astrum Space and Space-Eyes. The report said each one’s outcome depends on committed capital, redemptions and closing on the proposed terms. Seraphim also flagged launch capacity. Delays and groundings across New Glenn, Vulcan and Ariane 6 have limited supply, leaving smaller satellite operators exposed on rideshare. Seraphim expects that constraint to last through 2027 and 2028, with real relief unlikely before 2029. Looking ahead, Seraphim doesn’t expect fourth-quarter funding to stay at this level. It says 2026 is still on course to be the sector’s strongest funding year on record. -0- The inspector general for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration says the agency lacks the communication, tracking and cost-accounting processes it needs to manage the surveys that set its science priorities. The studies are called decadal surveys. NASA contracts with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to produce them. The report says NASA has invested billions of dollars in missions based on survey recommendations, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Mars Sample Return. In the last cycle, NASA received 160 recommendations across its five science divisions. Auditors found NASA’s approach has been hands-off, largely by design, to protect the surveys’ independence. The report says that limits communication and leaves division concerns unaddressed. The National Academies’ process often takes two years. NASA then gets a prepublication report that can run more than 700 pages, and it often has fewer than 10 days to review it. Division officials told auditors some recommendations can’t be acted on. One division received four recommendations in its 2010s survey and 26 in its 2020s survey, with similar staff and budget. In Biological and Physical Sciences, the survey recommended two research campaigns costing 100 million to 400 million dollars a year ... each ... for 10 years. One year of one campaign would exceed that division’s entire fiscal 2023 budget of 85 million dollars. NASA also isn’t fully counting survey costs, the report said. The agency spent about 16 million dollars on task orders for the last five surveys. Related mission concept studies cost about 76 million dollars, nearly five times as much. NASA doesn’t track staff time on survey work, and it doesn’t systematically track how divisions carry out recommendations. NASA’s Science Mission Directorate agreed with all eight recommendations. They include performance metrics in task orders, interim reports, more review time, cost tracking and directorate-wide guidance. Mark Clampin, the directorate’s deputy associate administrator, wrote that the surveys’ independence and federal contracting rules limit how much feedback NASA can appropriately give. He added that survey recommendations aren’t binding on the agency. NASA plans to ask the National Academies’ Space Studies Board to hold a lessons-learned workshop in spring 2027. Completion dates for the eight recommendations run from June 30, 2027, to May 31, 2028. Blue Origin says more than three billion dollars in Florida launch, manufacturing and booster-recovery infrastructure is meant to support multiple flights a week by the end of the decade. The company made that disclosure last week. It followed an Oct. 8 announcement of Constellation Park, a one-point-3-million-square-foot production campus for satellite and communications programs in Hutto, Texas. Start in Florida. Launch Complex 36A is being restored after a May 28 anomaly during a New Glenn hotfire test. In a June 30 update, Blue Origin said its investigation was ongoing and that it’s aiming to return to flight by the end of this year. The company has filed an Environmental Assessment to raise the permitted launch rate there from 12 a year to 50. The FAA’s website lists a draft assessment covering up to 50 launches a year. Next door, Launch Complex 36B is under construction as the future home of the larger New Glenn nine-by-four, and the company says it plans more New Glenn pads on the Space Coast after that. At Rocket Park, near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a 330 million dollar expansion will build the nine-by-four’s second stage. Blue Origin is targeting completion in summer 2027, with capacity for up to 150 upper stages a year. At Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the company is bui… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

NASA and the Department of Energy have signed a memorandum of understanding that sets a framework for joint work on space nuclear power and propulsion . NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed the agreement Oct. 8 in Washington. The signing took place at a science summit hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The agreement covers advanced research, fuel production, testing, launch integration and operations. NASA called safety the central pillar of that work. Isaacman said nuclear power will let the agency go farther, operate longer and field more capable spacecraft and instruments than it has before. He described it as the start of a nuclear era for NASA. What is not locked down is a dollar figure. NASA didn’t state funding levels, and it didn’t say which agency will handle which tasks. The memorandum builds on a December 2025 executive order that directs NASA to develop a launch-ready lunar surface reactor by 2030. NASA says it and the Energy Department are making steady progress toward that goal. Two programs carry most of the load. Space Reactor-1 Freedom is scheduled to launch in 2028, and NASA says it will move nuclear propulsion from laboratory research to deep-space operations. Lunar Reactor-1 is a fission surface power system meant to keep the planned Moon Base running through the lunar night. NASA hasn’t given a launch date for that one. The agreement also covers radioisotope power. NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft, bound for Saturn’s moon Titan, will use a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator and 24 lightweight radioisotope heater units. NASA’s mission page lists the launch as no earlier than July 2028. The two agencies also plan to supply 24 similar heater units for the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover. For suppliers of reactor components, nuclear fuel and radiation-tolerant hardware, the document spells out the work areas the two agencies plan to share. It doesn’t yet spell out the budgets behind them. The agreement takes effect Nov. 1. -0- Voyager Technologies says its Griffin-1 lunar lander has completed acceptance testing , clearing the spacecraft for the next phase of launch preparation. Griffin Mission One is what Voyager calls an infrastructure-class lander. It was developed by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, which Voyager acquired this summer, through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The testing verified the lander’s systems performance. The mission will carry 10 payloads from six countries to the moon’s south pole. That manifest includes payloads from NASA, the European Space Agency and commercial customers. Voyager Chairman and CEO Dylan Taylor said that when Griffin touches down, it will be the largest commercial payload delivery to the moon to date. He described the company’s role as building the transportation layer for a lunar economy, meaning the logistics, access and systems needed for sustained operations there. Voyager Executive Vice President John Thornton said every payload on the manifest represents a customer and a capability. Griffin-1 is now part of NASA’s Moon Base Phase One objectives. Voyager says the lander is designed to deliver rovers, science instruments and other infrastructure, including future power systems. For payload developers and component suppliers, that makes Griffin a delivery route tied directly to the agency’s lunar surface plans. Griffin-1 is heading back to Voyager’s Lunar Systems headquarters in Pittsburgh for final preparations. From there, it ships to Cape Canaveral, Florida. Voyager says the launch is planned for later this year, but it hasn’t announced a date. -0- NASA has awarded two Small Business Innovation Research Phase One contracts to Yank Technologies to develop wireless power hardware for robots on the moon and Mars. Yank is a Brooklyn-based developer of wireless charging systems. The company’s pitch starts with a problem every lunar surface system shares. Regolith, the fine dust on the lunar surface, builds up on the metal terminals of electrical connectors. And because regolith is a strong insulator, it can interfere with power transfer. Yank calls that a significant mission risk. The first award covers a modular, kilowatt-class wireless power system for NASA robotic vehicles and equipment. It moves power without physical contact, so there’s no exposed connector for dust to foul. The company says it’s designed to keep working when the transmitter and receiver aren’t precisely lined up, and to adjust for different power levels and positions. The second award covers a high-power-density converter that changes alternating current to direct current. Yank says it delivers kilowatt-class power in a smaller, lighter package. It also monitors its own voltage, current and component temperature to detect wear while it’s running. CEO Josh Yank said the contracts expand the company’s wireless power work for NASA, with an emphasis on modularity and scalability for lunar and planetary surfaces. The company says both systems are intended for a range of vehicles, payloads and science equipment. The power interface is a small part with a large footprint. Any rover, payload or instrument that has to plug in on the lunar surface faces the same dust problem. Yank didn’t disclose the value of the awards, and it gave no timeline for either project. The Federal Communications Commission’s Space Bureau has extended to Jan. 5 the deadline for Reflect Orbital to post a surety bond for its Earendil-1 satellite. Earendil-1 is a single satellite designed to deploy and test a steerable sunlight reflector. The bureau licensed it July 9, and the original grant required the bond by Aug. 10. Jennifer Gilsenan, acting chief of the Space Bureau, signed the order. It adds 150 days to the deadline, for a total of 180 days from the grant. Reflect Orbital had asked for a 90-day deferral, or a permanent deferral as an alternative. The bureau turned down the permanent option, citing the commission’s pending move to new Part 100 licensing rules. The amount of the bond was not disclosed. The bureau said the bond is meant to push operators to launch quickly or surrender their authorizations early, so they don’t warehouse spectrum and orbital slots. It said Reflect Orbital’s plan to launch within several months of the grant reduces that concern. The bureau also said it’s granted the same 150-day deferral to other operators with small systems and near-term launches, including an August grant to Impulse Space. There was no objection to Reflect Orbital’s request for an extension. But this action doesn’t settle two other challenges to the license, and both remain pending. Earthjustice filed an application for review on behalf of Dark Sky International, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Environment America and the American Bird Conservancy. An individual filed a separate petition for reconsideration. The FCC says it addressed an earlier petition to deny from the American Astronomical Society in the original grant. Earendil-1 is authorized to operate at an altitude of about 388 miles in an orbit inclined 88 degrees. The license runs two years from the date the company certifies the satellite is operating in orbit, and Reflect Orbital has to launch and begin operations by July 9, 2032. For operators of small satellite systems, the order shows a consistent pattern. The bureau is granting 150-day bond deferrals for near-term launches while the Part 100 rules are pending. Reflect Orbital’s bond is now due Jan. 5. No launch date has been suggested by Reflect Orbital -0- NASA has released its final request for proposals for commercial space stations in low Earth orbit. The solicitation asks companies to design, build, test, certify and operate commercial destinations, with end-to-end destination and transportation services for human spaceflight. The contract structure matters here. NASA plans to award firm-fixed-price, multi-award, indefinite-delive… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

The FCC has authorized SpaceX to deploy and operate a constellation of 15,000 satellite s built to deliver service directly to ordinary mobile phones. The order, released Tuesday by the FCC’s Space Bureau and Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, grants SpaceX’s application in part and defers it in part. The satellites will fly in nine orbital shells, at altitudes between about 203 and 208 miles. In the United States, the network will provide Mobile Satellite Service and what the FCC calls Supplemental Coverage from Space, or S-C-S. Outside the country, it’ll offer mobile satellite and direct-to-cell service. Backhaul links to the ground will run in the Ka-, V-, E- and W-bands. Most of the U.S. spectrum comes from SpaceX’s purchase of EchoStar licenses. Regulators approved that two-step transaction May 12. Under this grant, SpaceX can’t begin operating in the former EchoStar bands until the second step of the deal closes. The one exception is testing during launch and early orbit. The order grants several rule waivers. S-C-S rules normally require a satellite operator to lease spectrum from a land-based wireless carrier. Regulators dropped that requirement, since SpaceX will hold the terrestrial licenses itself. The bureaus said making SpaceX lease spectrum from itself would be an unnecessary regulatory burden. In exchange, SpaceX has to meet interim 911 call-routing rules as if it were a wireless carrier. Regulators also cleared SpaceX to use 15 megahertz of spectrum, between 1,695 and 1,710 megahertz, for signals sent from phones up to the satellites. That band isn’t designated for S-C-S. In 27 protection zones around 47 federal earth stations, SpaceX can’t enable phone transmissions until it completes coordination with federal users. Within the U.S., SpaceX may also exceed current power limits that protect geostationary satellites until new sharing rules take effect. It must keep a 4-degree exclusion zone around the geostationary arc. That waiver drew objections. DIRECTV, SES, Eutelsat, WorldVu Satellites and Viasat opposed it as a risk to geostationary networks. The bureaus denied Viasat’s petition in part and deferred the rest. Blue Origin raised concerns about access to launch windows, given the constellation’s size and density. Regulators found SpaceX’s coordination commitments, including a trajectory screening tool, sufficient for now. DarkSky International asked for an environmental review. The bureaus declined, saying the action is categorically excluded under current rules. For geostationary operators and federal spectrum users, those waivers and protection zones set the terms they’ll operate under while new sharing rules are written. The bureaus deferred SpaceX’s request to operate in two Ka-band frequency ranges outside the U.S., along with a broader request for mobile satellite operations abroad between 1,429 and 2,690 megahertz. SpaceX has 30 days from the order’s release to decline the conditioned grant. It must post a surety bond by Nov. 4. Half the constellation, 7,500 satellites, must be in orbit and operating by Oct. 7, 2032, and the rest by Oct. 7, 2035. The 15-year license term begins when the first satellite reaches its authorized orbit. -0- NASA has selected three science instrument suites to fly to the Moon on commercial landers to study surface hazards, possible underground lava tubes and buried ice ahead of a planned crewed outpost. The selections come under NASA’s Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon program, known as PRISM. The payloads will be delivered through Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or C-L-P-S, as part of the agency’s Moon Base Program, which supports Artemis. Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said the goal is to put science on the lunar surface first. She said that work will give future crews the information, resources and safety precautions they’ll need to survive the lunar night. The first suite is the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station for the South Pole. It’s an autonomous station built for long-term hazard monitoring. It’ll track falling micrometeoroids and the gases that drift into the Moon’s thin atmosphere, and it carries a seismometer. The second, called GIMLI, will be deployed at the Marius Hills Pit. It’ll scan beneath the surface to determine whether the pit opens into a large lava tube. NASA says spaces like that could shield future astronauts from extreme temperatures and radiation. The third, called DISCO, will measure ice in small, permanently shadowed pockets known as micro-cold traps. NASA says those will be the first direct measurements of that ice taken on the ground. DISCO will also study how rocket exhaust disturbs the surface and how stable the ground is for rovers and crews. Brad Bailey, who directs the Exploration Science Strategy Integration Office, said each PRISM selection strengthens NASA’s ability to deliver science to the lunar surface. For commercial lander companies, each selection adds to the pipeline of NASA payloads awaiting delivery. NASA hasn’t yet named the lander missions that will carry the three suites or said when they’ll fly. -0- A new forecast projects the global market for space sensors and actuators will grow from about $5.75 billion this year to a little over $9 billion by 2031. The forecast comes from MarketsandMarkets, a research firm based in Delray Beach, Florida. It projects compound annual growth of 9.5 percent over the five-year period. The firm attributes that growth to smaller components, artificial intelligence-driven control systems and radiation-hardened materials. It also cites growing private space ventures and public-private partnerships. By product type, the firm expects sensors to hold the largest share of the market, given their role in satellite positioning, propulsion control and robotic operations. Within sensors, it projects scientific instruments such as spectrometers will post the second-highest growth rate. By platform, the firm estimates interplanetary spacecraft and probes will hold the largest share, citing rising investment in planetary exploration. By customer, it ranks commercial buyers first this year, followed by government and defense. The firm projects the Middle East will be the fastest-growing regional market. It points to national space programs, new satellite missions and efforts to build local space technology capabilities. On the supply side, the firm found manufacturers are focusing on smaller, lighter and more energy-efficient systems for small satellites, low Earth orbit constellations and deep space missions. It says companies are also investing in digital engineering, additive manufacturing and test facilities to shorten production cycles. The full report covers market data from 2021 through 2031. A prototype spacecraft designed to beam power to another satellite is in orbit and being prepared for what its builder describes as the first optical power beaming between two free-flying spacecraft. The spacecraft, called Protostar, was built by Star Catcher Industries of Jacksonville, Florida. It flew last week on a SpaceX rideshare mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Once commissioning is complete, Protostar will release a CubeSat and track it. It’ll then beam measurable power to the CubeSat’s commercial-grade solar panels. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Michael Snyder said the mission will produce operational data in real orbital conditions to support the build-out of the company’s commercial power grid in space. He said the team built and shipped the spacecraft in less than two years. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Rush said power availability limits the major applications driving the space economy, from national security intelligence to A-I computing in orbit and Earth observation. Star Catcher says it holds a world record for optical power beaming, set at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Late last year, it completed an on-orbit test of its spacecraft acquis… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

The FCC’s Space Bureau has set a new interference threshold for satellite broadband sharing. It’s a lower signal limit — the one satellite operator SpaceX pushed for — over objections from rival operator SES. The update revises a dataset of geostationary satellite links, or GSO links, used to check whether new broadband satellites in lower orbits interfere with them. Those lower-orbit systems are called non-geostationary, or NGSO. The change stems from an April 30 order that replaced power limits dating back to the 1990s. Under the new framework, NGSO operators have two options: strike a coordination agreement with GSO networks, or prove they won’t cause unacceptable interference, using that shared dataset of links. The affected bands run from 10.7 to 12.7 gigahertz, 17.3 to 18.6 gigahertz, and 19.7 to 20.2 gigahertz. The Bureau built an initial set of 328 reference links back in April. It opened the dataset for public comment in May, and got nine comments, seven replies, and several ex parte filings. The most contested issue: the signal threshold for links without adaptive coding. SpaceX proposed capping that threshold at 9.5 decibels — a number DIRECTV said matched its own network design. Of 40 new links submitted by GSO operators, only three came in above that level, and each was tied to a satellite already past its design lifespan. SES pushed back, arguing some of its media-distribution links need a higher threshold — around 12.6 decibels — to stay reliable. In the end, the Bureau adopted that 9.5-decibel threshold. It also corrected some Hispasat link parameters and cleaned up outdated entries in the dataset. But it declined to revisit the broader selection criteria, saying that could introduce edge cases into the analysis. The revised notice takes effect 30 days after it’s published in the Federal Register. And the Bureau says it’ll take another look at the framework once operators have real-world experience from which to draw. -0- The Space Bureau wasn’t done with satellite paperwork this week. The FCC has opened a public comment period on Rocket Lab’s bid to acquire satellite fleet operator Iridium Communications. That deal also triggers a separate national security review, outside the Commission’s own docket. Under the agreement, signed June 28, a Rocket Lab subsidiary would merge into Iridium. Iridium would come out the other side as a wholly owned Rocket Lab unit. The FCC has set a deadline for comments and petitions on the docket of Oct. 15, with oppositions due by Oct. 30, and replies by Nov. 9. Separately, the companies have notified Team Telecom — the federal committee that reviews foreign participation in U.S. telecom. They say a network security agreement Iridium already holds with the government will keep applying once the deal closes. Iridium operates 66 low-Earth-orbit satellites, serving more than 2-and-a-half (2.55) million subscribers with mobile voice, data, maritime, and aviation connectivity. It also holds 8.725 megahertz of L-band spectrum, part of which supports government aircraft tracking. The filing would transfer several licenses to Rocket Lab: an international Section 214 authorization, one space station license, six earth station licenses, and a handful of experimental licenses. Rocket Lab operates launch pads in Virginia and New Zealand, plus manufacturing sites in Long Beach, California, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company says a combined operation would be better financed to speed up a next-generation Iridium constellation. Both companies say the deal doesn’t raise competition concerns. And they say Rocket Lab’s foreign ownership falls within Section 310 limits, so no waiver is needed. For now, the Space Bureau has simply accepted the applications for filing. It hasn’t ruled on the merger’s merits — that decision comes after the Nov. 9 reply deadline. -0- A presidential commission charged with designing a new national space academy has held its first meeting, and opened the door for states to bid on hosting the campus . President Trump created the commission through an Aug. 28 executive order, signed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. It gives the panel 120 days to recommend how to build the academy — and the workforce pipeline behind it. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman chaired the first session at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Members from across the federal government took part, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Ethan Klein. Staff from the Office of Management and Budget, the National Security Council, and the White House also sat in. The next morning, NASA published a Request for Information, asking governors — or their designees — to submit proposals for hosting the academy. Each state gets just one submission. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson said site selection would shape the institution’s future. And Isaacman said the RFI gives states a chance to help build what he called a legacy institution. States need to detail site readiness, environmental and regulatory considerations, and the surrounding support ecosystem. NASA’s target timeline: break ground no later than 2027, temporarily host the first 300 students in 2028, and move into a permanent campus by 2031. State proposals are due by 6 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 26. NOAA has set up a new contract to buy commercial satellite data from 14 companies over the next decade. The goal: strengthen weather and space weather forecasting. The contract is called Space-Based Environmental Monitoring, set up through NOAA’s Commercial Data Program. It took effect Sept. 1 and runs through Aug. 31, 2036 — a five-year base period plus a five-year option. The data breaks down into seven categories, and NOAA has named eligible suppliers for six of them. Two names show up again and again: Spire Global and Tomorrow.io, appearing across nearly every category, from GNSS radio occultation to microwave sounders to multispectral imagery. Other suppliers on the list include PlanetiQ, Muon Space, BAE Systems, Hydrosat, ICEYE US, and SpaceX. The seventh category — infrared sounders, which measure atmospheric temperature and moisture — still doesn’t have a vendor. NOAA Assistant Secretary Taylor Jordan said the agency wants to maximize the value of data coming from its commercial partners. The contract sits under NOAA’s ProTech 2.0 vehicle — an $8 billion shared-ceiling contract set up back in 2021 that also covers procurement for the National Weather Service and other NOAA offices. The Commercial Data Program itself runs under authority Congress granted through the Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017 and the PROSWIFT Act of 2020. And NOAA says it can add categories and vendors to the contract as its needs change over the next 10 years. -0- But the NOAA contract wasn’t the only reason Tomorrow.io showed up in the news this week. The company was confirmed as t he customer behind a $187 million satellite contract that had gone undisclosed since March. Denver-based York Space Systems will build at least 20 spacecraft for the program, using its M-CLASS platform. York is sole prime on this phase — responsible for both building the satellites and integrating the payloads. Each spacecraft will carry five Tomorrow.io instruments: Gen-2 microwave sounders, GNSS radio occultation and reflectometry sensors, infrared and visible imaging, and space-based precipitation radar. Together, they’re designed to give forecasters a fuller read on the atmosphere, updated on a global scale. York Chief Technology Officer Michael Laczjok (LAYT-shih-kohk) said the M-CLASS platform was built for exactly this kind of mission. Tomorrow.io Chief Executive Shimon Elkabetz said the program needed a partner that could move fast on demanding payload requirements. York says it’s put more than $755 million into production capacity to build constellations at this scale. And tha… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

President Donald Trump signed an executive order late last week creating the United States Space Academy , a planned institution to train engineers, technicians, operators and astronauts for the nation’s space programs. The president signed the order at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, during the same event where he presented the Artemis II crew with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. The order establishes a Presidential Commission on the United States Space Academy, chaired by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, with Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson serving as executive director. Two White House officials, Michael Kratsios and Kevin Hassett, will serve as vice chairs. At a news conference following the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday, Isaacman said the academy is intended to help staff the workforce NASA will need for its coming lunar and orbital plans. “So I think when you when you look at what is envisioned with the the Space Academy, which will be under NASA, you can see that’s by design from the get go with the the commission that’s been established for it, that this will be where potentially, you know, hundreds of new NASA civil servants come in to join, join the space agency every year,” Isaacman said. “And they would also have the option to perhaps go into the Space Force or elsewhere.” The commission has 120 days to deliver a report to the president addressing the academy’s governance, service obligations for graduates, a physical location and any legislative requirements. It’s the third major space policy action from the administration in nine months, following an “Ensuring American Space Superiority” order signed in December and a National Space Transportation Policy memorandum signed Aug. 20. -0- The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Aug. 28 to begin a series of recurring reviews of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation weather satellite program. The bipartisan request, signed by Chairman Brian Babin, a Republican from Texas, and Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, covers NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations program, known as GeoXO, and the agency’s satellite-management partnership with NASA. GeoXO is intended to replace the current GOES-R satellite series, which supports severe weather forecasting, hurricane and tornado warnings, and wildfire detection. NOAA has restructured the program, reducing the planned constellation from six satellites to four. The committee’s letter states that change is expected to lower the program’s life-cycle cost from $19.6 billion to $12 billion, though the cost and schedule effects have not been finalized. Lawmakers asked GAO to evaluate how the reduced satellite count affects a targeted 2032 launch window, data continuity during the transition from GOES to GeoXO, and the program’s ability to sustain two operational satellites plus one spare. No timeline was given for GAO’s response. -0- The U.S. Space Force has awarded a three-month Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase One contract to Yank Technologies to study wirelessly recharging satellites while they remain in orbit. SpaceWERX, the Space Force’s innovation arm, granted the $75,000 contract to the Brooklyn, New York-based company. Founder and CEO Joshua Yankowitz said the company is due to deliver technical feasibility data to the Space Force in October, and that a positive result could lead to a follow-on contract worth about $1.2 million to build a working unit. Yankowitz said the technology is meant to complement, not replace, propellant refueling and robotic servicing already under development across the industry. “You could think about us as typically creating hotspots. With the Army, when the war fighter goes within the combat vehicle, the transmitter’s in the seat, the receiver’s on the tactical uniform, and it just charges — you don’t have to worry about it,” Yankowizt said. “With satellites, it’s really about collaborating with on-orbit servicing providers. There’s a lot of emphasis right now on propellant refueling, but the more physical contact you make with a satellite, the more things that could go wrong. You could think of us as another tool in that toolset, especially for a satellite that’s experienced damage or has a survivability issue — you could think about us as the interconnect that’s high-reliability, less prone to failure, because you don’t have that physical interconnect requirement.” The underlying architecture carries over from work the company has done for NASA and the Army, with the biggest changes coming in materials and component qualification rather than the core design. “There’s a good amount of carryover on the fundamentals of wireless power, even across different industry verticals. So really it’s more the qualification of the components than the topology that’s different,” Yankowizt said. “Definitely the most congruent is the stuff we’re doing with NASA — the lunar surface has a lot of applicability in terms of getting ready for that operating condition, compared to on-orbit servicing. The architectures are very similar, from the converter side, the coil side — it’s primarily material selection and qualification. That’s the main difference between one environment and another.” The theory behind the technology is something called “Resonant Induction” ... the basic principal is related to some now-common household technology. “So that’s kind of like the cousin to charging pads or induction. So some of the key things that we do that are different are we excite the coils at a certain frequency band to increase that charging distance, as well as have very efficient coils to extend that distance. However, that alone is not enough. One of the core competencies of what we do that we’re leveraging across all the other industry verticals we operate in is the ability to operate for very dynamic, what’s called dynamic load conditions or unpredictable load conditions. So for example, we don’t really care if it’s a robotic vehicle moving here on Earth to a rover on the moon, we could characterize for that environment as well as the power levels required for that respective asset,” he said. Yankowitz said the company has received a little over $3 million in new NASA contracts for lunar-surface power interfacing over the past year, separate from this Space Force award. Lunar Outpost has selected a long-range lidar sensor from AEye Incorporated to help guide the Pegasus Lunar Terrain Vehicle, the rover NASA astronauts will use to cross the moon’s surface as part of the Artemis program. AEye, based in Pleasanton, Calif., builds software-defined lidar sensors mainly for the automotive, defense and industrial markets. Lunar Outpost, based in Golden, Colo., is developing Pegasus under a NASA contract to transport crews at the moon’s South Pole. Neither company disclosed the dollar value of the sensor deal, describing it only as a multi-million-dollar transaction; it’s separate from the roughly $220 million NASA award Lunar Outpost received in May to advance the Pegasus design. AEye Chairman and CEO Matt Fisch said space mobility represents a new market for the company and called the lunar environment the most demanding proving ground any sensor can face. The sensor, called Apollo, can detect objects at ranges up to one kilometer. Lunar Outpost said it chose the sensor for its ruggedness against the lunar vacuum, temperature swings and vibration — conditions that can’t be fixed in the field — along with a compact size that fits the rover’s mass and volume limits. -0- Sierra Space revealed Tuesday that its Dream Chaser spaceplane will carry payloads for undisclosed national security and commercial customers on its debut flight . The Louisville, Colo.-based company said the mission will also carry NASA cargo under the agency’s Cargo Resupply Services program. Sierra Space did not disclo… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

President Donald Trump has signed a new national policy for commercial space transportation , directing federal agencies to expand launch infrastructure and prioritize commercial providers for government missions. The memorandum, titled “The National Space Transportation Policy,” replaces a policy directive issued in 2013. It sets a goal of supporting more than 1,000 orbital launches and reentries a year by 2030, though it includes no funding figures and no penalty for missed deadlines. The policy directs the secretary of war and the NASA administrator to run federal launch ranges in a way that accommodates both government and commercial users. It also codifies a “Buy American” preference, directing agencies to launch federal payloads only on U.S.-manufactured vehicles, with limited exceptions. Several provisions carry fixed deadlines. The secretary of war has 180 days to publish new range scheduling criteria. The Commerce Department and Federal Communications Commission have the same window to report on spectrum access for launch activity, a task they’ll repeat every two years. The Interior Department has 90 days to identify federal land for an additional reentry site. The next fixed deadlines fall in 90 and 120 days. -0- Louisiana and SpaceX on Tuesday announced plans to build a spaceport designed to launch the company’s Starship rocket thousands of times a year from the state’s Gulf Coast. SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell announced the project alongside Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and Susan Bourgeois, secretary of Louisiana Economic Development. The facility, called Starbase, Louisiana, is designed from what the company calls a clean-sheet approach, with 10 Starship launch pads, deep-water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities and its own propellant production. “By starting with a clean sheet design, we’re planning to build a self-sustaining spaceport with its own propellant production, power generation, deep water shipping capabilities, vehicle processing facilities, and probably an airport,” Shotwell said. “And thanks to the abundant resources here in Louisiana, we have ready access to the natural gas that fuels these rockets to get to orbit.” Company and state officials offered differing figures for how many jobs the project will create. SpaceX has committed to at least 3,000 permanent positions, but Shotwell said in her remarks the number could run well beyond that. you have a storied history of building large complex infrastructure projects, will be at scale, and we’re looking to you for help,” she said. “As part of our commitment to the state, we expect to create at least 3,000 permanent jobs. Elon said 10. Based on our experience in Starbase, Texas, it’s probably closer to 10 than three. And like, as I said, and likely far more.” Shotwell pointed to hiring patterns at the company’s existing Starbase, Texas, site, where she said 60% to 80% of new hires are local residents — a pattern she said SpaceX intends to repeat in Louisiana. According to the company, initial civil work on the site could begin as soon as next year, with the first launch as soon as 2029. -0- The Federal Communications Commission has opened a public comment period on how to secure spectrum access for the nation’s launch and reentry operations. The agency issued the notice under docket ET 13-115, with comments due Sept. 14 and reply comments due Sept. 24. Three bands set aside for commercial launch and reentry activity total 215 megahertz of spectrum, but that allocation is secondary to other federal and non-federal users, requiring coordination before every launch. The commission is asking how launch activity might grow over the next two years, the following three to five years and beyond five years. Roughly 200 launch activities occur annually in the United States under the current allocation, created under the Launch Communications Act of 2024. The notice also seeks comment on a petition filed by the Commercial Space Federation asking the commission to update spectrum-sharing rules in three additional frequency bands. Comments can be filed electronically through the commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System. Andrew Ware of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau is the point of contact for additional information. -0- SkyFi is adding an artificial intelligence system to its Earth-imagery platform that answers customer questions directly, without requiring users to search satellite archives or specify technical parameters themselves. The tool, called Rowan, went live this week inside SkyFi’s existing web and mobile platform. The company aggregates imagery from more than 300 satellite and aerial sources into a single catalog. Rowan is designed to handle the full workflow in one conversation: searching the archive, tasking new satellite captures, running analytics and returning priced options a customer can buy without leaving the chat. SkyFi Chief Executive Luke Fischer said the system is built to guide customers toward specific requirements rather than fill in gaps on its own. He cited data centers as a current example. “Maybe a prompt is like, hey, what type of imagery and resolution works best so I can get the best view of this data center. Now compare side by side, you know, from two months ago to current day and you can get those imagery, you know, requests, solve for you all in this, this very nice sequence. So now you can start to paint the picture, then you can apply analytics, you know, building detection, you can run analytics and again, in the same ecosystem that customers are getting used to operating in, meaning these LLM like environments where you’re getting answers now. Cause really, you know, with Rowan, imagery is great,” Fischer said. “It’ll always tell a story, but it’s about these answers in the context for somebody to make a decision like, is this data center on track? Yes or no. Is the data center, you know, have power generation? Cause you can now see that for the big turbine engines that power a lot of these, you know, for this. And now in the future too, you know, as thermal satellites, you know, become more proliferated. Now you can apply these unique, you know, imagery types and data sets to really get a full picture, but it’s all in the same environments. So for example, if you’re using platforms, you don’t have to download imagery from one platform and upload it to another LLM. It’s all powered on Rowan. And again, this is about speed. You know, speed of information for commercial customers usually means money. And that’s where, you know, I think this industry has lacked on those answers.” Fischer said most of the errors the company has seen during testing trace back to vague prompts rather than the underlying imagery data. Rowan draws on the same catalog SkyFi has built since the company’s founding in late 2021, and Fischer said the system is designed to recommend among more than 300 imagery sources and partners without steering customers toward SkyFi’s own margins. “Rowan will prompt you as you go, and it’s going to show you the price, it’s going to, you know, recommend differentiating or different capabilities, smaller, ais bigger ais, you know, it really will will help educate that user to refine it. So they’re not, you know, I’ll say inadvertently buying a very expensive image where, you know, maybe it’ll even recommend like, hey, there’s an image taken yesterday, that’s an archive image, and it’s, you know, fraction of the price. And that may be the mission, may solve that mission or that problem set for the customers for it,” Fischer said. “So, you know, we’re, we’re source agnostic at SkyFi, you know, and that’s been the mission and will be the mission forever is, you know, it’s really about solving those those customers, but there’s enough prompting, you know, with Rowan itself, as we’ve been testing it for a long, long time, you know, to make sure we’re not inadvertently, you know, given a customer something th… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

Office of Space Commerce Director Taylor Jordan testified before the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee on July 15, defending a new framework called the Space Commerce Certification . The proposal is the Trump administration’s answer to a long‑standing problem: a growing number of commercial space activities don’t fall under any existing federal license. Currently, the FAA regulates launch and re‑entry, the FCC regulates radio frequency transmission, and the Department of Commerce regulates remote sensing. But satellite servicing, in‑space manufacturing, commercial space stations, and lunar operations don’t clearly belong to anyone. Taylor Jordan told lawmakers the gap isn’t just a paperwork problem, it’s a compliance issue under Article Six of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. That document requires the U.S. to authorize and supervise the activities of its non‑governmental actors in space. “Everything else is shoehorned into legacy processes never designed to handle them. U.S. regulations simply do not offer a clear path to “yes” for novel activities,” Jordan said. “Instead, they risk trapping our industry in an endless maze. executive.” Under the plan, the Office of Space Commerce would act as a single clearinghouse. Companies would submit one application, which OSC would then circulate to the Department of War, the FAA, the FCC, the State Department, and NASA for review. It wouldn’t strip any agency of its existing authority, but it could let the FAA or FCC waive parts of their own review if a mission already holds a Space Commerce Certification. Jordan outlined one of the core components of the framework: a presumption of approval for novel space activities, which he said would give investors the predictability they need and require the government to justify a “no” instead of forcing industry to beg for a “yes”. “A key pillar of our process is the presumption of approval. For novel space activities, regulatory ambiguity prevents the free flow of capital,” Jordan said. “This process would give investors the predictability they need that supports the growth of the industry. It would require the government to justify a no rather than forcing industry to beg for a yes.” But the plan drew pointed questions from both sides of the aisle, and not every lawmaker was convinced the agency is positioned to pull it off. Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren of California raised concerns about the agency’s funding level, noting that the White House requested just 11 million dollars for the Office of Space Commerce for fiscal year 2027, an 80 percent cut from the fiscal year 2026 appropriation. “Should we conclude from this budget request that the administration does not prioritize ensuring that the United States remains the world leader in commercial space?,” Lofgren said. “It’s not clear to me how the office of space commerce would be able to take on the added responsibilities we’re about to hear about today.” Republican Pete Sessions of Texas pressed Jordan on whether the government is trying to catch up with industry or holding it back. Jordan said the goal is to build a system that works alongside fast‑moving commercial activity. “So we are trying to catch up. But the truth of the matter is we will never catch up to what industry is doing and how fast they are going. Creating a system today that is modular is the best way to move forward because industry is going to do what industry does and that’s move fast and provide capabilities that the US federal government relies on,” Jordan said. “We need to give them the confidence and the clarity to keep doing what they do. Now we also need to catch up if you will allow me on the international front. We have today cobbled together our ability to respond to the Outer Space Treaty through existing regulations. And sure we meet the bare minimum requirements for our treaty obligations but we need to meet the moment and meet industry where they are. So to be clear we need to catch up because we are not meeting industry where they are at today.” For now, the certification framework remains voluntary and is still awaiting formal sign‑off from the White House. Jordan told the committee that once it’s approved, OSC plans to launch an initial pilot phase focused on mature technologies nearing operational status, and refine the process from there. -0- In-space logistics company Kall Morris is turning International Space Station experiment time into a playbook for debris‑removal and satellite‑servicing missions . The company’s REACCH system, short for Responsive Engaging Arms for Captive Care and Handling, ran more than 170 capture trials on the station using tentacle‑like arms with gecko‑inspired adhesive pads. Astronauts varied surface materials and motion through the campaign, building a dataset that would’ve been prohibitively expensive to collect with one‑off small satellites. Instead of wrapping a target, REACCH attaches to a surface and then pushes, allowing it to move unprepared objects larger than itself away from collision paths or toward controlled deorbit. The system is designed specifically for unprepared targets that weren’t built with capture interfaces, which sets it apart from servicing systems that require cooperative spacecraft. Kall Morris is now planning follow‑on tests beyond the station and positioning REACCH for life‑extension, relocation, and debris‑removal missions in low Earth orbit, where operators and insurers are looking for practical tools to manage congestion. -0- Relativity Space is expanding its Florida footprint with a new facility aimed at supporting production and testing for its next‑generation launch vehicle. The company plans to bring more of its large‑scale metal 3D printing closer to customers and the range, tightening the loop between design, manufacturing, and flight. State and local incentives are tied to jobs and capital investment, reflecting how launch‑adjacent manufacturing is being treated as industrial base, not just spaceport support. For suppliers, the new facility signals ongoing demand for materials and precision parts compatible with additive manufacturing, and for program managers it underscores Florida’s dual role as both launch site and production hub. Relativity says co‑locating these functions should accelerate development cycles, a priority as customers push for faster, more responsive launch options. -0- Redwire is adding capacity in Indiana with a new facility focused on advanced manufacturing for space infrastructure and microgravity‑related products. The site will give the company more room to scale hardware for stations, satellites, and in‑space manufacturing platforms that were stretching existing facilities. Officials are tying the project to regional workforce development, drawing on Midwestern manufacturing skills for aerospace‑grade production. For primes and integrators, an additional U.S. Redwire plant diversifies the source for critical components and reduces logistics risk as more platforms move to commercial operating models. As those platforms come online, program and supply chain teams will have a broader domestic base to tap when they structure multiyear contracts. The Federal Communications Commission approved a new Part 100 to unify satellite spectrum sharing rules and move away from case‑by‑case coordination under Part 25 at their July monthly meeting on Wednesday. In International Bureau Docket 25‑306, the agency outlines a power spectral flux density formula that would cap how much signal any non‑geostationary system can direct toward Earth or the geostationary arc in shared bands. The change is meant to scale a framework that was built for a handful of constellations into one that will accomodate dozens of broadband, direct‑to‑device, and servicing systems all competing for Ku‑, Ka‑, and V‑band access. During the commission’s July monthly meeting, FCC Space Bureau Acting Associate Division Chief of the Satellite Programs and Policy Division Brandon Padgett, o… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

SpaceX priced its initial public offering on June 11th and closed its Nasdaq debut at $161 a share, up 19% on day one and up another 20% the session after, making it the largest IPO in stock market history by several measures. After hitting a high of about $226 on June 26th, the stock has since settled to an average price of $175 per share, give or take a few dollars. [Paywall] The company trades under the ticker SPCX. Its registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists the offering mechanics in detail, but it does not break out revenue or costs by business line. Starlink’s subscription broadband and Starship’s heavy-lift development program are reported as a single entity, with no segment-level income statement separating the two. That matters because the businesses do not behave alike. Starlink is a maturing, recurring-revenue operation. Starship is still unprofitable and absorbing billions of dollars in capital expenditure with no near-term commercial payback. SpaceX has also disclosed that it builds its own solar array elements, Ka-band antenna components, and payload channel hardware in-house at its Washington state facility, a vertical integration decision that affects Starlink’s cost structure directly. Michael Potter, Co-founder of the Institute for Space Commerce, says that vertical integration strategy is a “superpower” or Elon Musk’s management approach. “I think there was a fetish in kind of Western aerospace that everything should be outsourced, that you have all sorts of subcontractors. And so, you know, the aerospace world was used to that. And Elon was maniacal about trying to get control vertically of everything from, you know, machining to, you know, getting control of those, you know, kind of raw materials, those inputs. And because of that, he was able to control not just the quality and not just the time, but most importantly, there’s this kind of unwieldy supply chain that many aerospace companies later become victims to.” Adding to the complexity, SpaceX closed its $60 billion acquisition of the artificial intelligence firm Cursor during the same 30-day window as the IPO. That deal will show up in near-term earnings as goodwill and integration cost, regardless of how the underlying technology eventually performs. Potter says that how it affects the company stock remains to be seen. “Once we get to this next quarterly results from SpaceX, so it looks like early August,vthen you’ll start to dig into the details of this. And the jury’s out, right? Like, hey, what does that acquisition mean? And is it gonna be truly accretive? And so I think the jury’s still out. I mean, all of us are intrigued. I mean, we’re all intrigued. But I think, and this is the problem about going from vision to execution. And this is (going to) be a difficult transition for the SpaceX executive team, which is now it’s about execution and the discipline that goes with that. And then just the micromanagement that the market is (going to) demand for that. And so I think that’ll be one of the first things that analysts look at.” Boeing and Lockheed Martin report their space, defense, and commercial units separately. SpaceX has not, at least in this filing. Analysts say any segment-specific margin figure circulating for Starlink or Starship individually should be treated as a modeled estimate, not a confirmed company number, until SpaceX’s first quarterly filings arrive. -0- Sierra Space says it can now build satellite solar arrays on an automated production line that removes most of the manual labor traditionally required for cell stringing, panel lamination, and harness integration. [Paywall] The company calls the process “zero-touch” manufacturing, applying surface-mount technology, the same automated placement and soldering method used in printed circuit board assembly, to a product that has historically been built by hand in small batches. Sierra Space says the line is intended to support its own Dream Chaser spaceplane and Large Integrated Flexible Environment habitat programs, and to serve as a production capability it can offer to outside customers through its Space Systems division. That division traces its manufacturing history to Sierra Nevada Corporation’s decades of solar array and power system work on NASA and Department of War missions, including GPS III, Mars 2020, MAVEN, and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite fleet. Sierra Space has not published unit-level cost data, and no independent filing has confirmed a contract award or qualification milestone tied to the automated line since the company’s original announcement in September 2023. Redwire Corporation’s Roll-Out Solar Array product line and Boeing’s Spectrolab solar cell business remain the established, hand-build incumbents in this segment, and both carry flight heritage and government qualification history that a new production process still has to compete against on a contract-by-contract basis. Industry analysts say the timing lines up with a broader shift in demand, as large low Earth orbit constellations move from custom, low-volume satellite builds toward high-volume, standardized production. -0- European satellite manufacturers are working against a regulatory deadline on hydrazine propellant, and the timeline for resolving it falls inside the design window for satellite buses already on the drawing board. [Paywall] The European Union classified hydrazine as carcinogenic under its chemical regulation known as REACH in 2011, and later placed it on the Annex 14 Authorization List, meaning companies cannot use it inside the European Union without a time-limited authorization from the European Commission. That authorization has to be renewed on a regulatory schedule, not a satellite program schedule. ArianeGroup manages most of the hydrazine loading and handling infrastructure in France and Germany, and any authorization decision runs through the company’s compliance posture. Airbus Defence and Space, Thales Alenia Space, and OHB SE are the three satellite integrators most exposed, because their geostationary and constellation bus lines have historically specified hydrazine thrusters as the default system. Alternatives exist. Bradford Space’s Swedish subsidiary, ECAPS, has flown its ADN-based green propellant on Sweden’s Prisma mission and, according to public reporting, on Planet Labs’ SkySat constellation. Aerojet Rocketdyne, now part of L3Harris Technologies, developed a separate green propellant that flew on NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission in 2019. Neither alternative has been qualified across the full range of thruster classes European primes currently fly at volume, and requalifying a thruster for a new propellant chemistry can take several years and tens of millions of dollars. Program managers are increasingly building green propulsion options into new satellite procurement requirements as a hedge against the outcome of the next authorization review. -0- Four publicly traded companies hold overlapping, and in several categories dominant, positions across the component tier that every satellite communication payload depends on. [Paywall] L3Harris Technologies, Honeywell International, Comtech Telecommunications, and Teledyne Technologies supply the radio frequency amplifiers, waveguide assemblies, and ground terminal electronics used across both commercial and military satellite communication systems. L3Harris and Teledyne, through its Teledyne e2v and Teledyne Defense Electronics units, dominate traveling wave tube amplifiers and solid-state power amplifiers. Comtech supplies ground segment modems and troposcatter systems. Honeywell’s Aerospace Technologies segment supplies terminals and avionics that overlap with government satellite communication requirements. Once a prime integrator designs a payload around a specific amplifier or waveguide assembly, switching vendors mid-program typically means re-running thermal vacuum, radiation, and electromagnetic interf… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

HEADLINES Blue Origin plans to return its New Glenn heavy-lift rocket to flight by the end of this year, following a pad-side anomaly during a hotfire test in late May at Launch Complex 36 in Florida. Pad cleanup and debris removal are complete, and reconstruction is underway. Blue Origin says it has finished the first two phases of a five-phase recovery plan and is now working through design and repair work tied to the new operations concept. -0- Axiom Space has shifted its legal headquarters from Delaware to Texas, aligning its corporate registration with its operational base in Houston. The move brings Axiom’s legal home in line with Houston Spaceport at Ellington Airport, where the company has been based since its founding in 2016. Axiom reports roughly 700 employees, most of them in Texas. Its Houston Assembly Integration and Test Facility will handle final assembly of Axiom Station modules before launch to low Earth orbit. -0- NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines a firm-fixed-price contract worth up to approximately $148.3 million to deliver a production-line-qualified Nova-C lunar lander under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. It’s the sixth CLPS task order awarded to the Houston-based company. The contract is structured to qualify Nova-C for serial production, supporting a higher-volume pipeline of lunar deliveries for NASA and commercial customers. -0- And FCC Chairman Brendan Carr says the agency is nearing completion of reforms meant to speed up satellite and earth station licensing. The Space Modernization Order goes before the full Commission for a vote at the July 22 open meeting. -0- NASA’s Office of Inspector General says the space agency is now operationally dependent on a single company to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, with Boeing’s Starliner capsule unlikely to be certified for crewed flights before 2027. [Paywall] The audit, released June 30, found Boeing has not resolved helium leaks and thruster failures that have shown up repeatedly in testing. NASA officials had previously targeted fall 2026 for Starliner certification. The inspector general calls that timeline unrealistic, given unresolved technical issues and the fact that Starliner’s next flight will carry cargo, not crew. Investigators also questioned $127.9 million in milestone payments NASA made to Boeing for a future Starliner flight before the company had completed a single test flight. NASA has agreed with all six recommendations in the report, including holding further Boeing payments until certification is complete. SpaceX has flown twelve crewed missions to the station since earning its own certification in 2020. Boeing’s contract, once worth $4.2 billion, has been reduced to $3.7 billion after NASA removed two flights from the agreement last November. The inspector general says NASA will need to buy at least three additional crew flights, from either company, to keep the station staffed through its planned retirement in 2030. -0- A production bottleneck at a single Colorado supplier is limiting how many satellites the Space Development Agency and commercial constellation operators can get built over the next two years . [Paywall] Blue Canyon Technologies makes the reaction wheels and star trackers that let small satellites point precisely enough to be useful in orbit. Every unit must pass through thermal vacuum testing before certification, a process that can take more than a week per unit. Industry estimates ... not figures confirmed by the company ... put its annual production ceiling at 400 to 500 units. Demand from the Space Development Agency’s Tranche satellite programs, along with commercial operators including Planet Labs, Spire Global and HawkEye 360, is now running up against that ceiling. Lead times for reaction wheels and star trackers have stretched from six-to-nine months before 2022, to as long as eighteen months today, according to industry trade reporting. Blue Canyon is currently owned by RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies. But MDA Space recently announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire the company. The effects of that acquisition on the star tracker and reaction wheel supply chain remain to be seen. -0- SpaceX shares have climbed more than 40 percent since the company’s initial public offering, and Wall Street is now watching a lockup deadline that could test that gain. [Paywall] SpaceX priced its IPO at roughly $135 per share, raising more than $10 billion and giving the company a market valuation near $350 billion on its first day of trading. Standard lockup agreements typically bar early investors and employees from selling shares for 90 to 180 days after listing, which would place the first release window in September and a larger one in December. Analysts note that when lockup periods expire, the added supply of shares can pressure a stock’s price if buyer demand doesn’t keep pace. Smaller space-sector stocks, including Rocket Lab, Planet Labs and BlackSky Technology, often move in tandem with SpaceX because institutional funds hold them together in thematic portfolios. SpaceX’s exact lockup schedule has not been made public. Analysts point to a few factors that could offset any selling pressure, including index-fund buying if SpaceX is added to a major stock index, or a confirmed commercial Starship mission before the December window. -0- Space manufacturers are now waiting nearly twice as long for a critical rocket-grade metal , and supply chain analysts say the shortage could push back launch schedules already set for 2027. [Paywall] According to distributer data, Inconel 718, a nickel-chromium alloy used in combustion chambers, turbopumps and fasteners, is now quoting at 28 to 32 weeks for delivery, up from 12 to 16 weeks two years ago. Only a handful of major Western suppliers, including ATI and Special Metals, produce the alloy at scale. Sanctions have effectively removed a major Russian exporter from the market since 2022, and new capacity has not replaced it. Space programs compete for the same furnace and rolling-mill capacity used by commercial jet engine makers and the oil and gas industry, and space’s comparatively small order volumes put it at a disadvantage in that queue. Qualifying a new supplier or an alternate alloy typically takes 12 to 18 months, longer than many 2026 and 2027 production schedules allow. Programs across the industry are affected, including United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. Analysts say companies that pre-position inventory, or pay expedite premiums of 20 to 40 percent, are better positioned to protect their launch dates. -0- Chinese export controls on two lesser-known elements are working their way into the solar panels and radio equipment aboard American satellites. [Paywall] China controls roughly 80 percent of the world’s refined gallium and 60 percent of its refined germanium, and Beijing has required export licenses for both since 2023, tightening the rules further in December 2024. Germanium forms the base layer of the triple-junction solar cells used on most satellites, while gallium is a key ingredient in gallium nitride, the material used in high-power radio components for satellite communications. The U.S. Geological Survey says the United States has no domestic germanium production and imports nearly all of what it uses. Qualifying an alternative supplier for space-grade components typically takes 12 to 24 months under military and civil specifications. Suppliers including Spectrolab, SolAero and Germany’s Azur Space make most of the West’s space-grade solar cells and are believed to carry exposure to Chinese-origin germanium at the substrate level, though individual company sourcing has not been independently confirmed. The same materials feed defense programs, including Space Development Agency satellite constellations and military communications systems, extending the supply risk beyond the commercial sector. -0- Worth a Sec… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

Stockholm-based private equity firm EQT has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Exolaunch , a Germany-based satellite deployment technology and launch mission management company, marking the investment firm’s first move into the space sector. The acquisition is being made through EQT’s X fund, with the transaction expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2026. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Exolaunch has deployed more than 790 satellites across 47 missions for more than 200 commercial and government customers. The company has maintained a strategic relationship with SpaceX since 2020, participating in every Falcon 9 Transporter and Bandwagon rideshare mission since those programs began, and recently secured its first dedicated Falcon 9 launches, missions designated Exo-1 and Exo-2, scheduled for 2027 and 2028. -0- MDA Space has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Blue Canyon Technologies from RTX’s Raytheon business for $620 million in an all-cash transaction. Blue Canyon has launched more than 85 spacecraft and has more than 3,500 products on orbit. The company employs more than 400 people across two manufacturing facilities in Denver, CO. The transaction is fully committed and financed through senior secured debt at signing. MDA Space expects the deal to close by the end of 2026, pending customary closing conditions and required regulatory approvals. At current exchange rates, the purchase price represents an enterprise value of approximately 874 million Canadian dollars. -0- The European Space Agency has selected the NUVIEW Moonraker mission for a Phase A study under ESA’s Small Missions for Exploration, Destination the Moon program, moving the Berlin-based company’s lunar terrain mapping effort into a formal feasibility phase. NUVIEW serves as prime contractor and leads an international consortium developing space-based LiDAR for lunar applications. Moonraker would downlink LiDAR data directly to Earth, where it’d be processed into three-dimensional Digital Elevation Models, intended to support landing site identification, hazard assessment, and surface planning for future robotic and human missions. -0- A compact four-wheeled rover prototype developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is expanding the boundaries of robotic autonomy and terrain mobility, with implications for future missions to the Moon and Mars. The prototype, known as ERNEST, short for Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain, recently completed a seven-day field campaign in the Colorado Desert of Southern California, covering 16 miles over 37 hours with minimal human intervention. That’s an order of magnitude faster than NASA’s current Mars rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, can navigate. The ERNEST team is now launching a new autonomy project to integrate active suspension capabilities with longer-range intelligent navigation, enabling the rover to plan efficient paths around or through obstacles. A federal audit released Monday warns that NASA’s two primary launch sites are running out of capacity to support a dramatic surge in commercial and government launches, with aging infrastructure, some dating to the Apollo era, at risk of causing mission delays unless Congress removes funding barriers and the agency accelerates long-deferred repairs. The NASA Office of Inspector General report “NASA’s Launch Infrastructure”, found that Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia are both projected to approach or reach operational capacity by 2028 to 2029. Launches supported by Kennedy grew from 31 in 2020 to 109 in 2025, a 252 percent increase, and are projected to reach 268 per year by 2030. Wallops saw an even steeper climb, from 3 launches in 2020 to 17 in 2025, a 467 percent jump, with projections reaching 44 launches annually by 2030. This week on The Journal of Space Commerce Podcast , I talked with Dr. Tom Colvin, Managing Partner and Chief Technologist at Rational Futures, to unpack the findings of the firm’s recent report “SCRUBBED: America’s Launch Capacity Challenge,” commissioned by the Commercial Space Federation. Colvin acknowledged that traditional launch sites like Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg are already straining under congestion, infrastructure coordination failures, and regulatory friction. “Right now, operators are experiencing friction at the current launch cadence. The predictions for future launches are kind of off the charts, and nobody knows really what the capacity of even our existing infrastructure is, or when we’ll hit that capacity limit, what’s the biggest bang for the buck to fix it,” Colvin said. “And so we were taking a first sort of stab at making a much more rigorous, physically grounded and traceable analysis that people who are trying to plan for future infrastructure can use. Because if you’re going to build new infrastructure, you want it to be right-sized to the amount of demand or services that you’re going to have to provide. So that was effectively what we were doing, we pitched that we can also bring in certain technical constraints that we haven’t seen other people address.” Non-traditional sites, inland and sea-based spaceports, hold theoretical promise, but face massive capital requirements and a demand problem that market forces alone aren’t likely to solve. Proposals for orbital data center constellations totaling over one million satellites represent a demand scenario so large it’d require an entirely different conception of what American launch infrastructure looks like. -0- NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has moved quickly to collapse the agency’s mission directorate structure from seven directorates down to three, the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, a reconstituted Science Mission Directorate, and the Space Operations Mission Directorate. [Paywall] The Space Technology and Aeronautics Research directorates are being wound down, with programs distributed across the three survivors or terminated. As of this week, NASA hasn’t published a complete roster showing which programs land where. That gap is the operational risk. Every active contract carries a funding authority and a contracting officer. When that chain changes, modifications take time, and where contracting officers of record change, the FAR Part 42 novation process can add weeks or months of administrative lag. The restructuring is running simultaneously with a proposed fiscal year 2027 budget that recommends cutting the Science Mission Directorate by approximately 50 percent relative to fiscal year 2025 enacted levels. Congress hasn’t acted on that proposal. But supplier behavior, including workforce planning, hiring decisions and subcontract renewals, is already adjusting to a budget that hasn’t been passed. -0- Every U.S. government satellite in production depends on radiation-hardened semiconductors fabricated at one of a small number of domestically qualified foundries, and right now, three major program families are drawing from that same pool at the same time. [Paywall] The Defense Microelectronics Activity Trusted Foundry Program lists fewer than five domestic qualified fabs. Among them: Microchip Technology, BAE Systems Electronic Systems, Honeywell Aerospace, and SkyWater Technology. These foundries operate on process nodes from roughly 90 to 350 nanometers, and moving a chip program to a different foundry means requalifying from scratch, at timelines that typically run 18 to 36 months. The concurrent demand: the Space Development Agency’s proliferated low Earth orbit constellation has Tranche 2 production underway with Tranche 3 solicitation activity already on SAM.gov. The GPS III Follow-On with Lockheed Martin is a sustained multi-year draw through the late 2020s. And NRO next-generation procurement is active in the same window, additive to the capacity calculation, and invisible to the other two program offices. No public disclosure mechanism requires a prime contractor to reveal a found… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

The United States has begun enrolling foreign governments into its Traffic Coordination System for Space, marking the first expansion of the system beyond commercial satellite operators. The Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce has opened what it calls National Government Account access. OSC hopes to build a global space situational awareness coordination framework under Space Policy Directive 3, which directed Commerce to provide space traffic safety data and services to operators worldwide. The United Kingdom and Australia are the first two governments to onboard. The accounts are read-only, giving each country access to space safety information for all spacecraft affiliated with their nation. The program has no announced timeline for additional government enrollments. -0- A new industry-academia collaboration aimed at improving scientific understanding of what happens to Earth’s atmosphere when satellites burn up on reentry has launched, with Astroscale Holdings as convener and Planet Labs and the University of Southampton as founding participants. The initiative is called Atmospheric Impact of Reentered Spacecraft, or AIRS. Astroscale will coordinate the effort and contribute its own spacecraft data. Planet brings expertise in Earth observation, satellite manufacturing, and operations. The University of Southampton contributes research capabilities in aerospace engineering and atmospheric science. During reentry, spacecraft are exposed to extreme heating and interaction with atmospheric gases, leading to melting, fragmentation, and vaporization of materials. Under the program, space operators and manufacturers will share non-proprietary spacecraft design information with academic researchers. The goal is to improve atmospheric modeling accuracy, while protecting commercially sensitive data. -0- Starfish Space has selected Gilmour Space Technologies as the docking partner for its Otter Pup 2 on-orbit demonstration mission, targeting a docking attempt in the coming months. Otter Pup 2 launched in June 2025 to demonstrate rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking technologies in low Earth orbit. Following a series of successful rendezvous tests, Starfish Space chose the Gold Coast, Australia-based company for the next phase of the program. The mission will have Otter Pup 2 perform rendezvous and proximity operations with a Gilmour Space ElaraSat M-M-S-1 satellite ahead of the planned docking attempt. The collaboration gives the Gilmour Space operations teams flight heritage on proximity and docking procedures. -0- Axiom Space and Prada have unveiled the inner cooling and ventilation layer of the next-generation lunar spacesuit for NASA astronauts. The garment, called the Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, or L-C-V-G, is engineered as the innermost layer of the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit, known as the AxEMU. It is designed to keep astronauts thermally regulated and breathing during spacewalks of up to eight hours on the lunar surface. Axiom Space holds the NASA contract to develop the AxEMU for the Artemis program. The suit is slated for use on Artemis IV, which would mark the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17. The next articles are previews to some of the content that is available to paid subscribers to The Journal of Space commerce. Become a paid subscriber to get the full story. The first Starship-class orbital data center platform has a name, a delivery date, and a power architecture. The sub-tier supply chain it requires doesn’t yet exist at that scale. (Paywall) Muon Space recently unveiled Condor-Ultra ... a Starship-class spacecraft designed for data-center-class compute, with a 20-kilowatt initial power architecture scaling to 100 kilowatts in future variants. It integrates the NVIDIA Space-1 Vera Rubin Module, a purpose-built A-I inference platform Muon Space says delivers up to 25 times the compute performance of an H-100 GPU for orbital workloads. The first pathfinder delivery is targeted for 2028. Three supply problems define the near-term window, starting with power generation: Spectrolab and SolAero supply the majority of radiation-tolerant triple-junction solar cells sold in the United States. Golden Dome constellation programs are competing for the same production lines, and a capacity crunch could push program schedules back 12 to 18 months. Then, there’s thermal management: at 100 kilowatts of waste heat, passive radiators can’t do the job, that’s a vacuum physics constraint. No supplier currently offers a complete integrated active thermal control system at that power level. Meanwhile, NVIDIA hasn’t publicly disclosed the Vera Rubin Module’s radiation tolerance specification. Any program committing to a 2028 delivery will need to make a processor sourcing decision within the next 12 months or fall back to currently qualified hardware with significant performance limitations. The F-A-A’s June 2026 test flight approval for SpaceX’s Starfall in-orbit manufacturing vehicle is the regulatory triggering event. It establishes that a large-format Starship-class payload with computing functions can move through regulatory review, a precedent that didn’t exist twelve months ago. -0- Space Systems Command has awarded 12 “Other Transaction Authority” agreements worth a combined $3.2 billion for space-based interceptor prototype development under Golden Dome. Reading the vendor list as a capability map tells supply chain managers where the gaps are . (Paywall) The 12 companies span four tiers. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, General Dynamics, and Booz Allen Hamilton are the traditional primes, the systems integrators the program needs for hardware manufacturing at scale. RTX has confirmed it’s working with Rocket Lab as a subcontractor, the first visible sub-tier teaming relationship to surface publicly. Anduril’s inclusion signals that Space Systems Command views autonomous intercept decision architecture, not just interceptor hardware, as a core prototype requirement. Sci-Tec and Quindar are the tier that procurement officers shouldn’t overlook. Both are specialists in satellite ground systems operations and orbital analytics. Their selection signals that command, control, and ground segment capability will be evaluated at the prototype stage, it won’t be deferred to a later program of record. SpaceX, True Anomaly, GITAI USA, and Turion Space form the fourth tier, and the most structurally significant one. True Anomaly focuses on autonomous orbital operations. GITAI develops robotic systems for in-space assembly. Turion focuses on orbital mobility. Together, they describe an interceptor design space the established defense industrial base can’t supply without commercial partnerships, and a supply chain that doesn’t yet exist at production scale. One more number matters here. In late May 2026, Space Force awarded a separate $4.16 billion contract for a satellite constellation to track and target airborne threats globally. Together, the interceptor and tracking layer awards describe a complete kill chain being built simultaneously through the OTA mechanism. When two separate vendor sets are developing tightly coupled layers under separate agreements, the interface control documents that bridge them become the critical path item no single vendor owns, and the highest-priority near-term entry point for data link and software-defined radio vendors. -0- Surface treatment vendors, the facilities that apply coatings, anodizing, and corrosion-resistant finishes to flight hardware, are one of the least visible and most concentrated risks in the current space hardware supply chain. The bottleneck isn’t the technology. It’s the certification regime . (Paywall) Three overlapping qualification frameworks govern the work simultaneously: military process specifications, NASA process approvals, and NADCAP third-party accreditation. Maintaining all three isn’t optional, a lapse in any one can trigger a re-qualification process lasting mon… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

Four astronauts have been assigned to Artemis III , a two-week Earth orbit test mission scheduled for 2027 that will demonstrate rendezvous and docking operations with commercial lunar landers from Blue Origin and SpaceX. The crew will include NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik as commander, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano as pilot, and NASA astronauts Frank Rubio and Andre Douglas as mission specialists. NASA astronaut Bob Hines was named backup commander and will train alongside the prime crew. The announcement came during a live event Tuesday at Johnson Space Center, identifying the mission as a critical step toward Artemis IV the first planned crewed landing at the lunar South Pole, targeted for 2028. The Artemis III crew will launch aboard NASA’s Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman gave an overview of the mission. Isaacman VSOT (See Transcript) The crew will begin training immediately on Orion systems and will assist in development and operations of both the SpaceX and Blue Origin lander test articles. -0- York Space Systems has closed its approximately $67 million cash and stock acquisition of Solestial ... a Tempe, Arizona-based manufacturer of silicon solar cells engineered for the space environment. The transaction closed June 4th. York paid using a negotiated share value of $34.00 per unit, issuing more than 1.7 million shares of its common stock to Solestial’s sellers. The deal targets a supply chain vulnerability York says runs through the core of the satellite manufacturing industry. China controls 99% of the gallium and more than 60% of the germanium required for the legacy III-V solar cells used in most spacecraft today. It also produces 93% of the world’s polysilicon used in terrestrial solar panels. Approximately 95% of Solestial’s supply chain is already U.S.-based. Solestial will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of York and will continue supplying solar technology to external customers outside York’s own portfolio. -0- The Federal Communications Commission’s Space Bureau has opened two new processing rounds . The rounds cover non-geostationary orbit satellite systems seeking authority to operate in Ku-, Ka-, and V-band frequencies with a July 6th, 2026 deadline for new applicants. The bureau released the public notice June 5th. Three operators already hold conditional authorizations folded into these proceedings: SpaceX, Amazon Leo, and Logos Space Services. A fourth operator, SN Space Systems, has an application pending from the second V-band processing round that also requested Ku- and Ka-band authorization. The FCC has not set a deadline for acting on applications filed in the third processing rounds. -0- And are SPACs making a comeback? A merger agreement announced Monday values Rockville, Maryland-based spacecraft developer Quantum Space at $1.2 billion post-transaction. The company is set to go public through a combination with special purpose acquisition company Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. The merged entity will operate under the Quantum Space name and is expected to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “QSPC” pending shareholder approval and an anticipated close in the fourth quarter of 2026. Quantum Space has raised $57 million in equity funding to date, including a $40 million Series A extension closed in June of last year. The company’s Ranger 500 spacecraft completed a Manufacturing Readiness Review in late 2025. -0- SpaceX flew Starship Version 3 for the first time last week, and the launch cost equation for commercial payload customers shifted with it. [Paywall] The test flight, designated Flight 12, launched from a newly constructed second launch pad at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in southern Texas. It deployed 20 Starlink simulator satellites on a suborbital trajectory over approximately 10 minutes. SpaceX said ahead of the flight it did not anticipate a flawless test. Post-flight, the company confirmed the V3 ship stage completed its planned suborbital trajectory but the Super Heavy booster did not return to the launch site as planned. The architecture behind V3 is a structural redesign. The booster now uses three larger grid fins, an integrated hot-staging design, and a new interstage configuration SpaceX calls its Block 3. The company states V3 is designed to carry approximately 200 metric tons to low Earth orbit in fully reusable configuration and roughly 400 metric tons in expendable configuration. To put that in context: SpaceX’s original Starship required an expendable vehicle to reach 200 metric tons. The V3 reusable rating matches that number. That means a customer flying on a reused V3 vehicle accesses the same mass budget that early Starship variants could only achieve by expending the vehicle. Third-party analytics group Payload Research estimated Starship’s internal cost per kilogram in an expendable V1 configuration at approximately $500. Under V3’s advertised capacity, that same analytical framework suggests the per-kilogram number could fall by roughly half. Those are third-party projections. SpaceX has not published a V3 commercial rate card. The commercial payload certification timeline for V3 has not been announced. Neither has the timeline for non-Starlink, non-Starshield cargo access to the vehicle. -0- Impulse Space closed a $500 million Series D on June 2nd, bringing its total capital raised to more than $1 billion and the supply chain behind that ambition is still being built . [Paywall] The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC, with participation from Founders Fund, Lux Capital, and Linse Capital. The funds are earmarked for vehicles, propulsion systems, and operational architecture, a broad mandate that signals Impulse is actively expanding its manufacturing and supply base. Impulse operates two distinct vehicle programs. Mira, the company’s last-mile maneuvering spacecraft for low Earth orbit, has flown multiple operational missions, delivering satellites from rideshare drop points to their final orbital destinations. Its propulsion, avionics, and structural sub-tiers are either qualified or actively in qualification, indicating a supply chain in execution mode. Helios is a different story. The Helios kick stage is designed for geosynchronous orbit rideshare and deep-space transfer requiring substantially higher-thrust chemical propulsion, larger propellant tanks, and thermal management hardware that Mira does not need. As of June 2026, Helios has not flown. Its sub-tier qualification chain remains open. That opening is the primary supply chain opportunity this raise signals. The Series D’s explicit call-out of propulsion systems as a fund deployment target confirms that Helios’s propulsion architecture is still being finalized and sourced. For suppliers of high-thrust bipropellant engines, composite overwrapped pressure vessels known as COPVs and GEO-class thermal management systems, this is a defined qualification window. Suppliers with existing COPV credentials, including Arde, a Moog subsidiary with flight-heritage high-pressure vessels, and Steelhead Composites, a Colorado-based manufacturer with LEO constellation heritage, represent the vendor class for which that window is most directly relevant. There’s also a defense layer. Impulse is working as a subcontractor to Anduril Industries on the Space Force’s space-based interceptor prototype for Golden Dome, a team that also includes K2 Space, Inversion Space, Voyager Technologies, and Sandia National Labs. That relationship adds defense-grade guidance, navigation, and control requirements to Impulse’s avionics stack. Radiation-hardened flight computers are now part of the qualification picture. And those parts face supply pressure across the entire defense space sector. Suppliers currently qualified on SpaceX, Rocket Lab, or Millennium Space Systems programs hold a meaningful head start. For others, early engagement with Impulse’s supply chain team should be considered a prerequisite. NAS… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

In what appears to be a major change in direction, a NASA spokesperson said the agency will be pulling back from the CLD Core Module approach to developing a replacement for the International Space Station. Details are still thin, but NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens posted recently on X that the agency was going to re-think the strategy. “In the spirit of learning from past programmatic challenges and ensuring a responsible transition from the International Space Station, NASA evaluated both the current commercial space station approach and alternative pathways,” the post on X said. “Industry has provided extensive feedback making the case for a sustainable commercial market in which NASA is one customer among many, along with assurances regarding available transportation capabilities. The industry position will now shape the path forward as NASA proceeds with the original commercial strategy. “Over the coming weeks, NASA will work with stakeholders and industry to refine flexible requirements and acquisition plans, with a draft RFP expected later this month.” While NASA has informally reversed its proposed overhaul of the CLD program, the change has not yet been reflected in acquisition actions, with the Phase 2 contract still on hold and no RFP issued. This is a developing story, and we will bring you more details as they become available. It also fundamentally changes information we published in several articles this week that were researched prior to the shift. We apologize for the error. -0- Voyager Technologies has signed an agreement to acquire Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology for up to approximately $300 million in a combination of cash and stock, including contingent consideration. The deal joins a defense technology and space solutions company with a commercial lunar delivery operation that Astrobotic has built over nearly two decades. Astrobotic operates from facilities in Pittsburgh and Mojave, California, and holds contracts under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The combined portfolio spans mission management, communications, propulsion, surface delivery via the Peregrine and Griffin landers, surface power through LunaGrid, and habitation through Max Space. The transaction requires customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close by early July 2026. -0- NASA has awarded contracts to two companies to build and deliver crewed lunar rovers to the Moon’s south pole by 2028. Venturi Astrolab received a $219 million task order, and Lunar Outpost received $220 million — both under Phase 1 High Achievability Mission task orders of the Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract. Astrolab’s entry, the Crewed Lunar Vehicle-1, is adapted from the company’s FLEX rover architecture. Lunar Outpost delivers the Pegasus rover, a lighter evolution of its Eagle platform built specifically to meet NASA’s updated requirements. Both rovers reach the lunar surface through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. -0- Apogee has been awarded a five-year, $103.6 million task order to provide positioning, navigation, and timing — or PNT — contractor support services for the Department of War. The contract targets modernization of Global Positioning System capabilities essential to U.S. military operations, allied forces, and critical infrastructure worldwide. Under the agreement, Apogee will support modernization, acquisition, and sustainment planning for GPS-based technologies. The award comes as the Department of War refines its GPS acquisition strategy with an emphasis on delivering capabilities more rapidly to operational users. The F-C-C made two significant moves in last month, and together they set a procurement clock that supply chain leaders may not yet recognize is running . [Paywall] The first was FCC Order 26-26, released May 1st. The order eliminated mandatory Equivalent Power Flux Density limits — constraints that had governed non-geostationary orbit satellite operators since the late 1990s. In their place, the FCC established voluntary coordination agreements between N-G-S-O and geostationary operators. The Commission estimated the shift delivers up to seven times more usable spectrum capacity and more than $2 billion in economic benefits — without a single additional launch. Twelve days later, the FCC approved SpaceX’s acquisition of approximately 65 megahertz of mid-band spectrum from EchoStar Corporation — AWS-4, AWS H-Block, and unpaired AWS-3 licenses — in a $17 billion transaction. That spectrum underpins SpaceX’s next-generation Direct-to-Device network. Final consummation is expected by November 30, 2027, with interim buildout milestones spanning nine years. The FCC also granted AST SpaceMobile commercial authorization in April 2026 to deploy 248 satellites providing Supplemental Coverage from Space — SCS — using low-band 700 and 800 MHz spectrum in coordination with Verizon, A-T-&-T, and FirstNet. Half that constellation — 124 satellites — must be in orbit by August 2030. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have since announced a joint venture to build a technology-neutral satellite D2D platform targeting unserved and underserved areas. Those carriers are not simply customers. They are setting the technical interface standards every hardware supplier will need to meet. The supply chain pressure point is certification. D2D services at commercial scale require chipsets, modems, and radio frequency front-end components that do not yet exist in sufficient commercial volume. The FCC issued a one-year waiver allowing a broader range of end-user devices to connect to SCS services while equipment certification requirements are finalized. That waiver has a hard clock. Procurement programs that wait for an extension rather than plan to the stated deadline are carrying schedule exposure they do not need. -0- The United States Space Force’s Future Operating Environment 2040 report places supply chain disruption inside its darkest operational scenario — not as a footnote, but as a named gray-zone instrument alongside jamming, spoofing, and cyber intrusion. [Paywall] The FOE’s “Dark Horizons” scenario describes a 2040 environment of continuous, hard-to-attribute conflict below the level of declared war. Within that environment, the document explicitly identifies “targeted micro-supply chain disruptions framed as product recalls” as a tool China could use to gradually weaken adversary capability while staying below the threshold of open conflict. The core of the tactic is the disguise: a supply disruption that arrives as a quality issue, a safety notice, or a routine recall — and routes through commercial processes rather than military channels. The FOE cites Russia’s Sfera (sf-ER-ah) constellation as a concrete reference point. That program was cut from 600 to 360 satellites due to component shortages — demonstrating that even a major spacefaring nation can be bottlenecked by fragility in key inputs. The document identifies three supply chain categories with elevated exposure: radiation-hardened microelectronics, rare-earth magnets, and ammonium perchlorate. Program managers and executives at commercial space companies and defense primes relying on single-source suppliers in any of those categories now have the Space Force’s own risk framework to reference when making the case internally for supply chain diversification. -0- A recent Blue Origin New Glenn launch anomaly and ongoing Starship booster incidents have put a spotlight on something the space industry has been slow to treat as a core competency: crisis communications . [Paywall] Within minutes of each event, video clips flooded social media. Analysts speculated. Investors watched. Competitors observed. And customers began asking questions behind closed doors. That is the reality of today’s space economy. A launch anomaly is no longer simply an engineering event. It’s a communications event with potential impacts on a company’s reputation and brand. Michael Daily, President of NewSpace Brand B… This is a public episode. 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NASA is reshaping its leadership structure in what Administrator Jared Isaacman is calling a realignment to accelerate mission delivery. Under the reorganization announced last week, the agency is consolidating its five mission directorates into three. The ‘Exploration Systems Development’ mission directorate and the ‘Space Operations’ mission directorate are merging into a new ‘Human Spaceflight’ mission directorate. On the technology side, the ‘Aeronautics Research’ and ‘Space Technology’ directorates will combine into a new ‘Research and Technology’ mission directorate, which will also take on nuclear power and propulsion development. The ‘Science Mission Directorate’ remains unchanged. One of the more significant structural shifts: all directorate leaders will now report directly to the Administrator, rather than through layers of management. Isaacman says the goal is to cut bureaucratic drag and focus the agency’s talent on its top priorities, returning humans to the Moon, building a sustainable lunar base, and expanding the commercial economy in low Earth orbit. The reorganization also brings new leadership to three field centers, Goddard, Glenn, and Kennedy, and sets up a competition for the contract to manage the Jet Propulsion Laboratory when Caltech’s current agreement expires in 2028. For the commercial space industry, the realignment signals where NASA is directing its institutional weight. A leaner, more mission-focused NASA, with directorates reporting directly to the top, could mean faster decisions on commercial partnerships, procurement actions, and program commitments. That matters for anyone in the supply chain waiting on a government signal to move. -0- Blue Origin is making one of the largest single manufacturing investments in Florida’s space history. The Jeff Bezos-founded rocket company announced a 600-million-dollar expansion of its Rocket Park campus at Cape Canaveral, a project the company is calling Project Horizon. The centerpiece is an 830-thousand-square-foot upper stage manufacturing facility designed to increase the volume and mass Blue Origin can deliver to orbit from Florida. The project is expected to generate 500 aerospace jobs, with average salaries topping 98-thousand dollars a year. For the Space Coast, this is more than a construction announcement. Upper stage manufacturing is a high-precision, high-skill segment of the launch supply chain, the kind of facility that anchors a regional industrial base and draws sub-tier suppliers into the area. Blue Origin’s investment is a long-term signal that it intends to compete aggressively in the launch market from Florida. And the ripple effects on local suppliers, workforce pipelines, and adjacent infrastructure could be substantial. -0- Meanwhile, about 1,000 miles to the west, Firefly Aerospace is executing a different kind of manufacturing buildout , one focused on turning spacecraft production from a one-at-a-time process into a repeatable assembly line. The Cedar Park, Texas company has moved into a new headquarters campus, adding two new buildings to its existing spacecraft facility. Put together, the new buildings give Firefly roughly 144-thousand square feet of unified space — double what it had before. That campus sits less than 30 miles from the Rocket Ranch in Briggs, Texas, a 200-acre complex with six test stands dedicated to launch vehicle development. The centerpiece of the expansion is a new cleanroom ... four times larger than Firefly’s existing one and funded by a Texas Space Commission grant ... designed to support dedicated assembly lines for Blue Ghost lunar landers and Elytra orbital vehicles. Running multiple vehicles through integration concurrently is a direct answer to the production bottlenecks that have slowed spacecraft manufacturers trying to scale. Firefly has also established an in-house innovation lab called Gloworks, bringing propulsion, carbon composites, robotics, and 3-D printing capabilities under one roof. The idea is to compress lead times and keep critical intellectual property inside the company rather than farming it out to external suppliers. The company says the Cedar Park investments allow Firefly to template its Blue Ghost lunar lander into a production line capable of supporting multiple lunar missions per year. For a commercial space industrial base that is still largely built around one-off fabrication, that kind of throughput ambition is worth watching closely. -0- A new report released at the 2026 ASCEND Conference is putting hard numbers on a concern that has been building quietly in the launch industry: the United States may not have enough capacity to handle what’s coming. The report is titled “SCRUBBED: America’s Launch Capacity Challenge” . It was produced by Rational Futures in partnership with the Commercial Space Federation using FCC regulatory filings, government budget data, and orbital mechanics modeling to map three demand scenarios against existing U.S. launch infrastructure. The numbers are significant. With more than 180 launches conducted from U.S. soil in 2025, the report finds that demand could require up to 7,000 launches per year depending on which satellite constellations move to full operation. Annual spacecraft demand could range from 6,000 to as many as 230,000 satellites. The report identifies two categories of concern. At traditional launch sites like Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg, the primary obstacle isn’t physical space, it’s coordination. The report calls for a central management authority to handle zoning, shared infrastructure scheduling, and a reduction of evacuation zones through improved analysis of methane explosive yield. For newer and non-traditional inland spaceports, the challenge is economics. Standing up a site capable of supporting 10 to 20 orbital launches per year costs roughly 200-million dollars, a figure that market activity alone is unlikely to recover. The report identifies federal tools that could bridge the gap, including anchor tenancy arrangements and direct capital funding. The findings are landing at a policy-active moment. The Trump Administration is currently revising the National Space Transportation Policy, and the report’s authors are explicit: waiting for market forces to solve this problem on their own is not a viable approach. Every time a rocket lifts off, the camera follows the name on the side of the vehicle. The prime contractor gets the headline, the press release, and the investor call. The hundreds of suppliers who built the guidance system, the valves, the thermal protection, the power electronics, they get nothing but a purchase order. [Paywall] That gap between visibility and contribution has a name. Michael Daily, president of NewSpace Brand Builders and Ex Terra Media contributor, calls it the Integration Illusion , and he argues it isn’t just a communications problem. It’s a strategic market power problem with consequences that run through the entire space industrial base. Here’s how it works. System primes capture nearly all market visibility, investor attention, political prestige, and public brand authority. The component suppliers who enable mission success remain commercially anonymous, even when their technology is the actual source of mission differentiation. A propulsion supplier may solve an historic efficiency problem. A sensor company may create breakthrough imaging capability. A materials firm may engineer survivability essential for deep space. But the market only remembers the name painted on the spacecraft exterior. Daily identifies four downstream effects that should concern anyone tracking the health of the space industrial base. First, invisibility weakens supplier pricing power. When buyers treat subsystem providers as interchangeable, procurement gets driven by cost pressure alone. That compresses margins across the supply chain and discourages long-term innovation investment. Second, it damages capital formation. Investors gravit… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

NASA’s own watchdog is raising serious concerns about the agency’s commercial lunar lander programs, and the findings touch everything from cost controls to crew safety. The agency’s Office of Inspector General has issued audits covering both the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, known as C-L-P-S, and the Human Landing Systems program, or H-L-S, which is developing crewed landers for the Artemis campaign. On the C-L-P-S side, auditors found that costs had risen by more than 208 million dollars across the portfolio, with average schedule delays reaching at least 14 months per task order. NASA’s original delivery timelines were based on overly optimistic assumptions about the commercial market, assumptions that failed to account for supply chain constraints and technical development challenges. The average time from contract award to launch was running 44 months, compared to the 30-month target NASA originally set. The firm-fixed-price contracting model NASA uses, which puts financial risk squarely on vendors, created enough pressure that one C-L-P-S contractor went bankrupt. Others continue to operate under financial strain. The Human Landing Systems program tells a more nuanced story. Auditors found that contracting costs had been largely controlled, the SpaceX H-L-S contract increased by just six percent, and the Blue Origin contract by less than one percent. But technical and integration hurdles remain, and the crew safety picture is incomplete. Specifically, auditors found gaps in NASA’s testing posture and said crew survival analyses were not finished. And there is a live disagreement between NASA and SpaceX over whether the company is meeting the requirement for manual astronaut control during lunar descent, a potentially critical safety issue if something goes wrong during final approach. NASA has confirmed that Artemis Three will include critical on-orbit tests, rendezvous and docking with one or both landers, as a precursor to Artemis Four, which would return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years. -0- The aerospace industry has raised the bar for satellite operations, releasing what may be the most comprehensive orbital safety document yet published, and the timing is deliberate. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics published Version 3-point-0 of its Orbital Safety Best Practices for Satellite Operators this week. The document carries signatures from Amazon, Eutelsat, Iridium Communications, and SpaceX, a cross-section of the industry that reflects both the document’s reach and its ambition. The release coincides with ASCEND 2026, the A-I-A-A’s flagship conference running through this week in Washington, where orbital traffic management and space sustainability are front-and-center topics. The document covers the full lifecycle of a satellite, from design through disposal, and is written for global applicability. It is not a government regulation. It is a voluntary framework, and the authors are explicit about why: technology evolves faster than rulemaking, and guidelines built around goals are more durable than rigid rules that can’t keep pace. Some of the specific standards are worth noting. Satellites must be designed with reliable maneuvering capability and a radar cross-section large enough for tracking authorities to catalog them. Operators are expected to achieve a greater-than-90-percent probability of completing planned disposal. On orbit, operators are required to submit predicted position and velocity data to conjunction assessment authorities at least three times daily for low Earth orbit satellites. The standard threshold for a required collision avoidance maneuver remains one-in-ten-thousand, but when a potential collision could produce more than 50 debris fragments, the recommended threshold tightens to one-in-one-hundred-thousand. The disposal rule is direct: L-E-O satellites that cannot naturally decay within five years must be actively deorbited. And the document takes a firm position on pre-launch transparency, requiring operators to publicly share planned orbits, launch cadences, and satellite counts before launch. The governing principle is this: if something is discoverable after launch, it should be shared before. -0- A Jacksonville, FL company just closed a major funding round to build what it’s calling the first power grid in space. Star Catcher Industries has raised 65 million dollars in a Series A round — bringing total capital raised to 88 million dollars. The company uses optical power beaming to deliver electricity on demand to satellites in orbit, with no retrofit or custom hardware required on the receiving spacecraft. The first-ever space-based demonstration of that technology is scheduled to launch later this year. I spoke with Star Catcher co-founder and C-E-O Andrew Rush about what this raise means for the program and what comes next. (See Interview Transcript) Andrew Rush is co-founder and C-E-O of Star Catcher Industries. Joining the board as part of the Series A round is General John “Jay” Raymond, the first Chief of Space Operations of the United States Space Force. The satellite broadband race has a real second competitor now, and the stakes are significant. (Paywall) Amazon Leo, the low Earth orbit broadband service formerly known as Project Kuiper, is moving toward a mid-2026 commercial launch. Amazon rebranded the initiative last November, retiring the Project Kuiper name in favor of Amazon Leo. The company currently has more than 240 satellites in space and is working toward a constellation of more than 3-thousand, authorized by the F-C-C and planned across five deployment phases. The performance targets are competitive. Amazon Leo’s enterprise-grade terminal is designed to deliver up to one gigabit per second on downloads. Its standard residential terminal targets up to 400 megabits per second. Latency is expected in the 30-to-50 millisecond range, comparable to what Starlink delivers today. But scale is the key variable. Starlink currently operates roughly nine-thousand active satellites and has years of operational head start. Amazon Leo is just entering the market. Where Amazon may have its most meaningful edge is not in raw satellite count, it’s in ecosystem. Amazon Leo is being built with deep integration into Amazon Web Services, making it a natural connectivity layer for enterprises already running A-W-S cloud workloads. That positioning moves this competition out of a simple speed-and-price fight and into the enterprise infrastructure market, which is a very different battleground. Amazon C-E-O Andy Jassy recently described the service as “on the verge of launching,” noting the company has already secured revenue commitments from enterprises and governments. The broader commercial rollout is expected throughout the rest of 2026. -0- The in-space mobility sector keeps attracting serious capital, and the latest raise carries signals that go well beyond the headline number. (Paywall) Portal Space Systems, based in Bothell, Washington, closed a 50-million-dollar Series A in April, valuing the company at 250 million dollars. The round was led by Geodesic Capital and Mach33, with participation from Booz Allen Ventures, ARK Invest, AlleyCorp, and FUSE. It follows a 17-and-a-half-million-dollar seed round, one of the largest publicly disclosed seed financings in the sector at the time. The company was founded in 2021 by Jeff Thornburg, a former SpaceX engineer who helped develop the Merlin engine program. Its core technology is solar thermal propulsion, a system that concentrates sunlight directly to heat ammonia-based propellant, generating specific impulse approaching nuclear thermal performance levels, without a reactor and without the regulatory burden that comes with one. Portal’s Supernova spacecraft is designed to deliver up to 6 kilometers per second of delta-v across orbital regimes from low Earth orbit all the way to cislunar space. Orbital maneuvers that… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

On May first, the Commission released a landmark Report and Order replacing decades-old energy caps with a performance-based spectrum sharing framework. The ruling is designed to sharpen competition between satellite, cable, and terrestrial wireless providers. And then, on May twelfth, the F-C-C issued a separate approval for SpaceX to acquire approximately 65 megahertz of mid-band spectrum from EchoStar Corporation -- in a 17-billion-dollar transaction. That spectrum -- covering AWS-4, AWS H-Block, and unpaired AWS-3 licenses -- is the foundational layer SpaceX needs for its next-generation Direct-to-Device network. Commercial D-2-D services could begin as early as late 2026 for initial messaging and emergency alerts, with full constellation buildout extending through the next several years. Layer on top of that what the F-C-C had already done in April for AST SpaceMobile. The Commission granted AST commercial authorization to deploy a constellation of 248 satellites providing supplemental coverage from space -- using low-band 700 and 800 megahertz spectrum in coordination with Verizon, AT&T, and FirstNet. Half the constellation -- 124 satellites -- must be in orbit by August of 2030. And then this week, the story got even bigger. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon announced plans for a joint venture to expand satellite-based direct-to-device connectivity across the United States -- specifically targeting unserved and underserved areas. The joint venture would pool spectrum, create common technical standards, and build what the carriers are calling a technology-neutral platform that any qualified satellite operator can plug into. The three carriers aren’t just customers here. They are becoming the infrastructure layer that determines which satellite operators succeed at commercial scale. For investors and supply chain managers watching the D-2-D market -- the regulatory and commercial framework just got a lot more real. -0- NASA has proposed a CLPS 2-point-0 procurement -- a competitive follow-on to its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program -- and the agency intends to launch monthly uncrewed missions to the Moon beginning next year. To support that cadence, NASA moved to raise the CLPS contract ceiling to 4-point-2 billion dollars. (Paywall) The most recent award went to Intuitive Machines -- a 180-point-4-million-dollar contract to deliver seven science and technology payloads to the Lunar South Pole region. That’s Intuitive Machines’ fifth CLPS task order. For context -- this is the company that successfully landed the first commercial spacecraft on the Moon in 2024. On the private side, Lunar Outpost just closed a 30-million-dollar Series B -- oversubscribed -- led by Industrious Ventures. The company now has eight fully contracted lunar and cislunar missions on its manifest before 2030, more than any other commercial surface-mobility provider. Revenue has doubled each year for four consecutive years. The White House is leaning in as well. The Trump administration’s commercial-first architecture is explicitly targeting lunar surface presence by 2028, framing satellite connectivity and lunar logistics as critical national infrastructure. The question worth tracking is not whether the lunar market is real. It is. The question is whether the supply chain serving it can scale fast enough. Component lead times, launch cadence, and ground infrastructure are the binding constraints -- and those are exactly the kinds of gaps that create near-term opportunities for suppliers who move early. -0- The GEO-to-LEO transition has stopped being a debate. It is now an operating reality -- and the numbers from early 2026 earnings make that clear. (Paywall) Eutelsat Group’s early-2026 results showed LEO revenues surging nearly 60 percent year-over-year, while GEO revenues declined 4-point-5 percent. For the first time, the growth curve of the new business visibly outpaced the decline of the old one. Eutelsat followed that with a contract with Airbus valued at between $2.34 and $2.57 billion dollars for 340 additional LEO satellites -- backed by a $1.75 billion capital increase supported by the French and British governments. Those governments aren’t just writing checks. They’re treating satellite connectivity as critical national infrastructure, and they want sovereign capacity that Starlink cannot provide. Telesat Canada tells a different version of the same story -- and a more turbulent one. The company faces a 1-point-7-billion-dollar debt maturity wall in December 2026, and creditor litigation alleging it moved its LEO constellation assets beyond the reach of GEO-linked lenders. Telesat has dismissed the suits. Its prime contractor MDA Space is completing a high-volume manufacturing facility in Quebec aimed at a full launch cadence of 156 Lightspeed satellites by end of 2027. SES and Intelsat merged for 3-point-1 billion dollars, creating a combined fleet of 120 satellites and projecting free cash flow above $1.17 billion annually by 2027 and 2028. The merged entity’s highest-growth segments now account for roughly 60 percent of combined revenue -- including medium-Earth-orbit capacity serving NATO and defense clients. The through-line: the concept of multi-orbit has moved from conference keynote buzzword to core operating model. Companies that couldn’t afford to make this transition aren’t around to talk about it anymore. The ones still standing -- Eutelsat, SES-Intelsat, Viasat -- are building hybrid architectures that neither orbit can serve alone. The hard part isn’t the boardroom decision. It’s the engineering: creating a system that will enable seamless handovers between disparate orbits for a passenger mid-flight or a naval vessel mid-maneuver. None of the major operators have demonstrated that at commercial scale. That is the milestone the industry’s credibility depends on. -0- SpaceX has confidentially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and is targeting a late June initial public offering. The numbers being discussed are unlike anything the public markets have ever processed . (Paywall) The most recent reporting puts the target valuation between 1-point-5 and 1-point-75 trillion dollars, with a fundraising goal between 50 and 75 billion dollars. Either figure would shatter the record set by Saudi Aramco’s 29-billion-dollar offering in 2019. At 1-point-75 trillion, SpaceX would enter the public market in the same bracket as Alphabet and Amazon. Prediction markets as of this week placed the probability of a June 30th listing at around 72 percent. SpaceX is essentially three businesses operating in parallel: Starlink, which generates the bulk of current revenue growth; the launch business, which has no close competitor on cost or cadence; and a nascent space infrastructure and A-I platform play that Elon Musk has described as Space A-I Data Centers. For space commerce investors and analysts -- the I-P-O matters beyond the price. A public SpaceX will file quarterly reports. For the first time, the market will have standardized financial visibility into the company that now controls a dominant share of global launch capacity, the world’s largest satellite constellation, and the regulatory approvals shaping the entire direct-to-device market. The information environment around space commerce changes materially the day that S-1 becomes public. -0- A new analysis published this week by the Journal of Space Commerce maps a supply chain constraint that most constellation programs haven’t fully priced in: space-grade solar cells. (Paywall) Novaspace’s latest market report projects 16-thousand-900 small satellites launching between 2026 and 2035 -- roughly 1,400 pounds of hardware delivered to orbit every single day. But that headline number actually understates the pressure on the solar cell supply chain. In April, Space Systems Command awarded 20 Other Transaction Authority contracts worth up to 3-point-2 billion dollars to 12 companies prototyping orbi… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

The Federal Communications Commission has updated the rules governing how geostationary and non-geostationary satellite systems share spectrum . The Commission voted 3-0 on April 30 to approve a Report and Order that replaces a framework dating back to the late 1990s. That old framework was known as Equivalent Power Flux Density, or EPFD. The problem is that the satellite market no longer looks like it did in the 1990s. Modern broadband constellations can change signal behavior in real time, based on link conditions. The FCC’s new approach moves toward performance-based protection criteria, rather than fixed limits built for an earlier technical era. The Commission says the change could unlock as much as seven times more capacity for space-based broadband and generate more than 2 billion dollars in economic benefits. But the regulatory point is only half the story. The commercial point is that the FCC is clearing more operating room for satellite broadband to compete directly with cable, wireless and other terrestrial providers. FCC Chairman Branden Carr said at the April 30th meeting that the new rules will benefit consumers. “Today’s FCC decision will help supercharge that competition while expanding our country’s technological leadership,” Carr said. “Even though high-speed next-gen satellite services provide essential connectivity across the country already, Americans are now about to see a big upgrade. With today’s decision, Consumers could see a seven-fold increase in capacity for these high-speed satellite offerings.” The decision keeps pressure on private agreements and good-faith spectrum sharing. But it moves the center of gravity away from old technical caps and toward actual performance outcomes. For executives, investors and program managers, that is the signal to watch. Spectrum policy is now a direct driver of capacity, pricing and market entry. -0- Two new market reports this week tell the same broad story from different ends of the satellite business. One looks downstream, at satellite-based Earth observation. The other looks upstream, at propulsion. Together, they show where demand is growing and where the supply chain may come under stress. First, Earth observation . According to Allied Market Research, the global satellite-based Earth observation market is projected to grow from $3.5 billion in 2022 to $6.4 billion by 2032. That is a compound annual growth rate of 6.6 percent. The demand drivers are familiar, but stronger: agriculture, urban planning, disaster management, climate monitoring and defense. Government procurement is still doing a lot of the heavy lifting, with NASA, NOAA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency all buying more commercial data and analytics. The market is also shifting from raw imagery toward services. Observation-as-a-service, subscription imagery, on-demand tasking and AI-assisted analytics are becoming the more valuable layers. That is the downstream signal. The upstream signal is propulsion . A MarketsandMarkets analysis projects the global satellite propulsion market will grow from a tweak over $2 billion in 2026 to $4.66 billion by 2031. That is a 17.6 percent compound annual growth rate. The reason is simple. Satellites are not passive hardware once they reach orbit. They need propulsion for orbit raising, station keeping, collision avoidance, repositioning and controlled deorbiting. Electric propulsion is expected to be one of the strongest growth areas because it lowers propellant mass and fits constellation economics. But there is a caution inside the growth number. Market size does not equal supplier depth. A market can grow quickly and still be constrained by manufacturing capacity, qualification timelines and a limited base of flight-proven providers. That is why these two reports should be read together. Earth observation growth means more demand for analytics and more government reliance on commercial data. Propulsion growth means more demand for the hardware that keeps satellites maneuverable. All of that points to value moving toward companies that can connect data, hardware, operations and procurement into something customers can use. -0- Next, we turn from market reports to the organizations that help hold the industry together. Space Foundation was established in 1983, and for more than 40 years it has played the role of convener across the global space community. It does not build rockets. It does not operate constellations. Its job is to build the ecosystem around the companies, agencies, investors and international partners that do. That role is easy to understate until the industry gets complicated. Right now, the industry is dealing with Artemis, Golden Dome, national security space, commercial stations, proliferated constellations and harder questions about international partnerships. Rich Cooper, vice president of Strategic Communications and Outreach at Space Foundation, made that point in a conversation on The Journal of Space Commerce podcast . “I will say the state of relationships between international partners, who can do what, who is prepared to do what. Obviously, there’s a lot of challenge that’s going on in the world and lots of debate and discussion about what those alliances are and what they may look like in the future,” Cooper said. “But what you also, I would say, saw is relationships that have been built over decades. literally decades of collaboration and cooperation on countless numbers of missions. Those relationships remain as strong today as they were before. And that’s what gives, I would say, a great deal of energy to this community that we know we can do hard things. We know it’s going to take some challenge. We know that there are going to be some obstacles, but we know together we can get there. Artemis II proved that when you have all of the various pieces that came together and it all worked perfectly.” The point being that Space commerce is not just a collection of contracts. It is also a relationship network. It depends on which agencies trust which suppliers, and which international partners can still coordinate when politics get hard. The launch vehicles, the spacecraft and the payloads are visible. The trust network is more behind the scenes. But when programs become multinational and span multiple decades, the trust network becomes a very important part of the operating infrastructure. A piece of the American launch stack is changing hands again. AE Industrial Partners is taking a majority stake in Rocketdyne’s upper-stage propulsion assets from L3Harris Technologies in an 845 million dollar carve-out. AE Industrial Partners will acquire 60 percent. L3Harris will retain roughly 40 percent. (Paywall) AE Industrial Partners Managing Partner Kirk Konert told Ex Terra Media just after the acquisition was announced that the company was proud to be restoring a legacy name to the rocket propulsion market. “It’s been part of every lunar mission since the US started going to the moon and bringing humans to the moon and coming back to the moon this year. We’re really excited to be part of part of that in partnership with NASA and national security programs. And it’s I think it’s a really interesting model as we think about what’s happened with consolidation of all their aerospace and space companies over the last a few decades,” Konert said. “And now what we’re seeing is more of a deconsolidation and new entrants being being introduced into the market. This is part of part of that theme in a new way, which where L3 a prime has been part of the consolidation over the last couple of decades is now partnering with a specialized investor like AE industrial to reinvigorate and standalone a new platform in Rocketdyne, which includes some of the key workhorses of propulsion for our space and national security programs in the U.S.” The assets include the RL10 upper-stage engine, in-space propulsion systems, nuclear power assets for exploration missions and launch avionics. The RS-25 … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

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. -0- 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. -0- 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. 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. -0- 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 … This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe

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. -0- 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. -0- 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. 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. -0- 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 na… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.exterrajsc.com/subscribe