Space Commerce Week

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A weekly newsletter published to the community highlighting the news of the week and letting you know who our podcast guest is that week. We will look ahead to the coming week to see what's happening and let you know. www.exterrajsc.com

  1. 2d ago

    The OSC Pitches a Single Certification for Novel Space Missions on Capitol Hill, and the FCC's New Part 100

    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, outlined the provisions of the new Part 100. “This report in order would replace Part 25 of the Commission’s rules with Part 100. In doing so, it would delete unnecessary and outdated rules and organize the new rules in a manner that’s easier to understand. Additionally, it would create an application processing framework based on bright-line criteria presumed to be in the public interest, modify processing round procedures, and remove bond requirement for certain space stations,” Padgett said. “It would also create a new variable trajectory space station license category, extend license terms for most space and earth stations to 20 years, allow for a nationwide blanket licensing approach for earth stations, and require space station operators to share space situational awareness data. In addition, the item includes a further notice of proposed rulemaking that would seek comment on additional proposals and reforms intended to build upon the new Part 100.” There was no objection to the change on the three-member commission. Prior to the vote, Chairman Brendan Carr said the commission was making an unprecedented move. “We’re scrapping our old rules in their entirety and replacing them with better new ones. This kind of ambition shouldn’t be taken for granted. Regulators tend to tinker around the edges. They don’t throw away the rule book and rewrite it from scratch. They take years and decades to reform, not 18 months. The Space Bureau landed the rare trifecta on that, all while pushing through other game-changing reforms on spectrum sharing and spectrum abundance. There’s so much to like in the new Part 100 rules for one speed and predictability is built into the DNA,” Carr said. “The new rules establish bright lines and eliminate fuzzy standards. They keep licensing

  2. Jul 19

    The Major Question Remaining after the SpaceX Stock Rally, and Europe’s Hydrazine Clock

    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 interference qualification testing, a process that commonly takes 12 to 24 months. Comtech carries a distinct financial risk profile. The company has disclosed debt covenant amendments and balance sheet restructuring in recent filings, separate from the technical qualification risk that applies to its three larger, more diversified peers. Honeywell, meanwhile, has disclosed plans to spin off its Aerospace business into an independent public company, a restructuring that could affect supply continuity for programs sourcing Honeywell components. Export control adds a structural layer here. All four companies’ satellite communication product lines fall under International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which limits how quickly a new entrant could qualify as an alternative source. Trade press coverage this year has noted growing Pentagon attention to space supply chain mapping generally, and this component tier is one concrete example of where that mapping effort is focused. -0- Four years after Boeing suspended its purchases of Russian titanium following the invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. government still has not placed the Russian producer VSMPO-AVISMA (SM-poh ah-vis-MAH) on its sanctions list, and the exposure that decision was meant to address has not fully left the supply chain. [Paywall] VSMPO-AVISMA is one of the two or three largest titanium producers in the world and historically supplied a large share of aerospace-grade titanium to Western manufacturers. Boeing confirmed in March of 2022 that it had stopped buying Russian titanium directly. Airbus, which relied more heavily on the Russian producer, moved more slowly, continuing existing contracts before announcing a phased diversification. Pure-play space companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, have not made comparable public statements about their own titanium sourcing. Industry analysts say

  3. Jul 12

    NASA’s IG Audits the Commercial Crew Program, and the SpaceX Lockup Deadline

    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 Second Read K2 Space Plans Seattle-Area Expansion to Support Large Satellite Production Planet, Isar Aerospace Align on First All-German Satellite Extending Secure Military Communications Worldwide Satellite Refueling Demo Aims to Advance Circular Economy in Orbit Exposing a Composite Structure Bottleneck [Paywall] 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

  4. Jun 28

    NASA’s Shrinkage and Your Business, and a Coming Crunch at the Nation’s Spaceports

    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 foundry booking conflict before it becomes a delivery slip. The government has acknowledged the gap, SkyWater received a DoD CHIPS for America award. But new process qualification runs three to five years. That investment doesn’t rescue a 2026 or 2027 delivery schedule. -0- Voyager Technologies acquired Astrobotic Technology in early 2025, and with it, the most active lander portfolio in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. It also came with a heritage record that consists of one flight attempt that didn’t reach lunar orbit. [Paywall] Peregrine Mission 1 launched in January 2024, and suffered a propellant leak within hours of separation. The spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere ten days later. NASA hasn’t released a final root-cause determination. Voyager-Astrobotic now owns that propulsion architecture, the avionics and guidance stack, the payload integration interface specifications, and the ground operations infrastructure for both the Peregrine and Griffin landers. Griffin is the more consequential issue. NASA canceled the VIPER mission, Griffin’s primary payload, in July 2024, before the acquisition closed. Griffin is currently a large-class lander without a confirmed payload customer. Any organization that has designed a payload to Astrobotic’s interface specifications and needs to re-manifest to an alternative platform is looking at 18 to 24 months of re-qualification work, minimum. Two alternatives with active flight records exist: Firefly Aerospace, whose Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed successfully in March 2025, and Intuitive Machines, publicly traded as LUNR, with the Nova-C lander’s IM-1 Odysseus flight in February 2024. The pool isn’t empty, but it’s thinner than the vendor count suggests once you account for interface re-qualification. -0- You Might have Missed * South Australia Range Signs U.S. Firm for Multiple Orbital Reentry

  5. Jun 21

    Orbital Data Centers, Golden Dome OTAs and a European Space Act Update

    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 months and effectively sideline a vendor for new program work. The vendor landscape that results is thin. In electroless nickel plating, program managers sourcing a replacement vendor mid-program routinely find the qualified list narrows to one or two names when all requirements apply simultaneously. Re-qualification typically takes 90 to 180 days. In chemical conversion coatings, which is the highest-volume category for aluminum structures, the subset of vendors holding both commercial satellite and DoD classification-sensitive approvals is materially smaller than it appears. Two forces are compressing that capacity further right now. EPA regulatory pressure on hexavalent (Hex-uh-VAY-lent) chromium has pushed some qualified vendors out of the market entirely, they won’t invest in chemistry reformulation and re-qualification at the volumes they handle. And the current Golden Dome and commercial constellation production surge is driving demand that post-processing facilities can’t quickly scale to meet. Unlike fabricated components, post-processing capacity is constrained by facility square footage, chemical bath volume, and environmental permits. It can’t be doubled on short notice. Programs that map their post-processing dependencies now, before production orders arrive, can still negotiate long-term capacity agreements with qualified vendors. Programs that wait won’t have that option. -0- Finally ... the European Council circulated a compromise text of the EU Space Act in May, advancing it toward trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament. Every U.S. space company seeking European revenue will need to make a compliance decision before this regulation enters into force. (Paywall) The Council’s text narrowed the jurisdictional scope from the Commission’s original proposal, tightening the trigger to operators that launch from EU territory, operate satellites under a member sta

  6. Jun 14

    SpaceX Changes the Commercial Launch Equation, and Beyond the LTV Contracts

    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. NASA awarded two Lunar Terrain Vehicle contracts on May 26th. The headline is which companies won. The story for supply chain leaders is the procurement architecture behind the awards. [Paywall] Venturi Astrolab received a contract to produce its FLEX rover. Lunar Outpost received a contract for its MAPP rover. Both awards fall under NASA’s Artemis campaign. Combined, they represent approximately $440 million in potential contract value. Neither award is a single-delivery purchase order. Both were structured as indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts meaning NASA retains the right to issue task orders across a defined ordering period, with total contract value contingent on task order activity rather than fixed at award. That IDIQ structure signals NASA is building a recurring acquisition framework for sustained lunar surface capability, not issuing a one-time purchase. The rover contracts are one procurement layer in a five-domain architecture. NASA currently has active procurement activity or announced intent across surface mobility, surface power, surface communications, in-situ resource utilization, and surface habitat. Of those five domains, only surface mobility has named prime awards fully in place as of June 2026. The Fission Surface Power program co-developed with the Department of Energy is the most time-urgent open window. Phase 1 design contracts went to Battelle Energy Alliance, IX, a joint venture between X-energy and Intuitive Machines, and Lockheed Martin in June 2023. Phase 2 awards for flight hardware have not been announced. The sub-tier qualification window for flight-rated fission power components, shielding materials, and heat rejection systems is open now. There is also a timing issue for the LTV program specifically. Venturi Astrolab and Lunar Outpost have each disclosed technical partnerships and supply relationships in filings dating 18 to 24 months before th

  7. Jun 7

    The Challenges of Keeping Up With the Demand for Direct to Device Components. And Can the Supply Chain Be Weaponized?

    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 Builders and Ex Terra Media contributor, argues that most space supply chain firms still treat crisis communications as a contingency plan sitting in a binder — and that approach belongs to a previous era. In today’s commercial space environment, Daily contends that crisis communications is brand strategy. Launch providers, propulsion firms, avionics manufacturers, software developers, component suppliers, and systems integrators all operate inside a tightly connected ecosystem. When a high-profile failure occurs, the ripple effects move rapidly across the entire network. Daily’s core argument: organizations that have inte grated crisis preparation into their broader brand strategy project leadership during turbulence, while those that haven’t project uncertainty. Silence becomes noticeable. Contradictory messaging damages confidence. The companies that handle crises best rarely improvise — they prepare, build communications protocols, train executives, and align legal, engineering, operations, and communications teams before the first emergency ever occurs. For supply chain companies, that preparation shifts from optional overhead to operational resilience. It is competitive positioning. And in the modern space industry, it’s trust preservation. -0- Amazon’s $11.57 billion acquisition of Globalstar, announced in April 2026, marks a structural turning point for the commercial space industry — and the implications run well beyond two companies striking a deal. [Paywall] Amazon is not a space investor. It’s a logistics, retail, and cloud infrastructure company that has concluded satellite connectivity is too strategically important to source from a competitor. The buyer acquired Globalstar’s licensed spectrum bands and global network infrastructure. Based on the stated strategic rationale and deal structure, spectrum scarcity — not operating

  8. May 31

    NASA Shuffles the Directorate Deck, and the Realities of Orbital Refueling

    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 gravitate toward companies with visible market narratives. Suppliers without strategic brand presence often struggle to communicate their relevance beyond technical specs, and their innovations end up hidden inside someone else’s story. Third, invisible suppliers lose the talent competition. The next generation of engineers increasingly wants to work for companies associated with purpose and recognition. Technical excellence isn’t enough if nobody knows you exist. Fourth, and this is the one that should keep program managers up at night, invisibility increases systemic industrial fragility. If critical suppliers can’t sustain profitability, attract investment, or recruit expertise, the broader ecosystem becomes structurally vulnerable. Large primes may appear stable while the niche suppliers beneath them are quietly undercapitalized and at risk. Daily’s prescription isn’t louder marketing. It’s repositioning. Suppliers need to stop describing themselves through technical specifications and start communicating strategic consequence. Not “we manufacture radiation-hardened electronics.” But rather: mission survivability and national space resilience depend on our capability. That’s the kind of narrative that changes a procurement conversation. -0- The regulatory door for commercial on-orbit refueling has officially opened, and the suppliers who were already positioning themselves are pulling ahead. [Paywall] On March 24th of this year, the Office of Space Commerce released its proposal for a voluntary Space Commerce Certification process. The framework creates a consolidated interagency review pathway for commercial activities that fall outside existing regulatory regimes, explicitly including satellite servicing, on-orbit refueling, proximity operations, and orbital computing. The certification process is opt-in, not mandatory. But it provides something more valuable than a mandate: a pr

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A weekly newsletter published to the community highlighting the news of the week and letting you know who our podcast guest is that week. We will look ahead to the coming week to see what's happening and let you know. www.exterrajsc.com

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  • Creator
    Ex Terra Media, LLC
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    84
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ex Terra Media, LLC
  • Show Website
    Space Commerce Week