Space Commerce Week

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 were...

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...

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....

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 challeng...

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’...

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 t...

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 E...

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 li...

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 dis...

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 Sa...

The Federal Communications Commission is on the verge of a major overhaul in how satellites share spectrum — and the economic stakes are enormous. F-C-C Chairman Brendan Carr announced the Commission will vote on a new order to modernize its satellite spectrum-sharing rules . If adopted, the changes could unlock more than two billion dollars in economic benefits and enable up to seven times more c...

The European Union is pressing ahead with its landmark EU Space Act — even as the regulation faces mounting legal questions from its own advisers and a sharp rebuke from the United States government. The Council of the EU circulated a Presidency compromise text this spring, with a key negotiating session scheduled for April 21st. But the road to final agreement is getting more complicated by the w...

Here’s a number that would have seemed like science fiction three years ago — one-hundred-and-seventy million dollars for a Series A round . That’s what Starcloud just pulled in — and they plan to use it to put data centers in orbit. The company closed a $170 million Series A at a $1.1 billion valuation — making it a unicorn just seventeen months after its Y Combinator demo day. According to Starc...

NASA is not tiptoeing into the future. It is sprinting, and using nuclear power. NASA this week unveiled a sweeping set of initiatives at its recent “Ignition” event, doubling down on its ambitions to return Americans to the Moon — and this time, to stay.​ At the heart of the announcement is an accelerated Artemis program. NASA aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface by 2027, with missions la...

America’s space industry is booming — but the supply chain keeping it aloft is buckling under the pressure. A new report from the Aerospace Industries Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers is sounding the alarm: the U.S. space industrial base was built for a different era, and it’s struggling to keep pace with explosive demand. Consider this — more than 3,400 U.S. space objects were launched in 2...

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is taking aim at one of the least-talked-about chokepoints in the commercial space industry — spectrum. On Wednesday, Carr shared a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with his fellow commissioners. If it clears a full Commission vote at the agency’s March monthly meeting, the FCC would open a formal proceeding to address what it calls an acu...

The bipartisan leadership of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is pushing back hard on the Federal Communications Commission. Committee Chairman Brian Babin and Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren have sent a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr urging the Commission to withdraw — or substantially narrow — a proposed rulemaking titled “Space Modernization for the 21st Century.” The committe...

We start with what may be the most closely watched accountability story in human spaceflight in years. NASA has officially released the findings of an independent Program Investigation Team that examined what went wrong during Boeing’s Starliner Crewed Flight Test back in 2024. Starliner launched on June 5th, 2024, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the International Space...

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

SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval to launch up to one million satellites for what the company is calling an orbital data center system. To put that number in perspective, that’s roughly a thousand times larger than SpaceX’s current Starlink internet constellation. The FCC’s Space Bureau accepted the application last week, setting the wheels...

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee took its first look at the NASA 2026 Reauthorization bill in a markup hearing this week. “The NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026 ensures that America does not merely participate in the next year of space exploration, but that we lead it.” Brian Babin (R-TX) The full committee markup is the first opportunity for lawmakers to formally vote on the under...

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

Bipartisan legislation to provide regulatory predictability to the satellite industry, boost high-speed Internet access, and ensure American space leadership has been introduced in the U.S. Senate by U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Senator Peter Welch (D-VT). The SAT Streamlining Act establishes a clear, one-year deadline for the FCC to make a decision on a license appl...

AI-first Earth intelligence platform SkyFi has announced that it has raised $12.7 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Buoyant Ventures and IronGate Capital Advisors. This investment will accelerate product development and enhance SkyFi’s technology, including its platform’s user interface and analytical tools. Additionally, the company plans to forge new pa...

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