| By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: the EU moves ahead with a military satellite communications systems, the challenges of defining "commercial" for government space programs, SpaceX launches a GPS satellite and more.
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| | | | | | Top Stories
A new European Union government satellite communications program has started operations. GOVSATCOM, which pools capacity from eight already on-orbit geosynchronous satellites, began operations last week, European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius said Tuesday at the European Space Conference. The program is designed to provide secure communications capabilities to the EU and its member states and could expand by 2027, he said. GOVSATCOM is conceived as a "system of systems," merging existing national and commercial satellite capacities into a common EU pool. Kubilius added that he was confident the planned IRIS² constellation for secure connectivity will be ready in 2029. [SpaceNews]
The FAA expects commercial space transportation to continue to grow at a fast clip. Speaking at a spaceport conference Tuesday, an FAA official said there were 205 licensed launches and reentries in 2025, a 25% increase from 2024 and exceeding the FAA's forecast for 2025. The FAA, which has licensed roughly 1,000 launches and reentries since the 1980s, expects to see another 1,000 in the next four years. That growth has raised concerns about the FAA's ability to keep up, but the agency said it is working on various streamlining efforts, including those mandated by an executive order last August. The FAA also expects companies to meet a March deadline to move their launch licenses to new regulations, known as Part 450. [SpaceNews]
While government agencies in both the United States and Europe say they are "going commercial" in their procurements, there is little consensus on what that really means. A report Wednesday by the European Space Policy Institute and Aerospace Corporation's Center for Space Policy and Strategy found that "commercial" has become a catch-all term applied to everything from open-market data purchases to government-anchored development programs where the state remains the only customer. Both the United States and Europe are expanding their reliance on private space companies, and the report finds that they are doing so for different reasons and through different procurement cultures, with the U.S. making more use of fixed-price contracts and competition. European governments, by contrast, more often pair commercial language with strong public control, motivated by industrial policy, sovereignty and strategic autonomy. [SpaceNews]
A NOAA weather satellite program is still facing budget pressures despite scaling back aspects of it. The Geostationary and Extended Operations (GeoXO) constellation currently fits within anticipated budgets, a NOAA official said at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting Tuesday. That comes after NOAA scaled back GeoXO, reducing the number of satellites from six to four last year and removing instruments for observing ocean and atmospheric conditions. The first GeoXO satellite will use an imager built as a spare for the current GOES-R satellites, while later ones will use a new imager. NOAA said it will further scale back the GeoXO program if it cannot stay in projected budgets. [SpaceNews]
Exotrail and Astroscale France will work together on testing satellite deorbiting technologies. The companies said Wednesday they will work together on a mission, pending funding from the French government, that would launch in 2030 as part of a commercial satellite. The mission will examine how Exotrail's servicing vehicle can work with Astroscale's rendezvous and proximity operations capabilities. [SpaceNews]
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A Falcon 9 launched a GPS satellite Tuesday night. The Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 11:53 p.m. Eastern after being postponed a day because of weather. The rocket placed into orbit the GPS 3 SV09 spacecraft, the ninth of 10 GPS 3 satellites built by Lockheed Martin under a 2008 contract. This is the third consecutive GPS launch originally assigned to United Launch Alliance but later transferred to SpaceX to speed deployment, after Falcon 9 launches of SV07 in December 2024 and SV08 in May 2025. ULA will instead launch later GPS 3F satellites originally assigned to SpaceX. [SpaceNews]
A NOAA space weather satellite has reached its destination. NOAA said Tuesday that the Space Weather Follow On - Lagrange 1 satellite performed a maneuver last week to go into a halo orbit around the Earth-sun L1 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth in the direction of the sun. NOAA has renamed the satellite SOLAR-1, short for Space weather Observations at L1 to Advance Readiness. It will provide space weather observations to support forecasting and warnings of solar storms. [SpaceNews]
NASA has confirmed the quality of radio occultation data collected by PlanetiQ satellites. The company said Tuesday that the one-year evaluation, which compared PlanetiQ observations with data from the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate-2 (COSMIC-2) and commercial constellations, found that the PlanetiQ data were "broadly comparable" to other data for science applications. The radio occultation data, measured as navigation satellite signals pass through the upper atmosphere, are used for monitoring space and terrestrial weather. [SpaceNews]
An EU official wants to establish a European Space Command. European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius said at the European Space Conference Tuesday that there should be a partnership of national space commands among European militaries to share space surveillance data. This would lead to a creation of a virtual European Space Command to share space assets during wartime, and be linked to proposals for a European Space Defense Shield military satellite system. [Euractiv]
A NASA aircraft made an emergency landing at a Houston airport Tuesday. The WB-57 plane landed on its fuselage at Ellington Airport after its landing gear failed to lower. The two people on board were not injured, and NASA is evaluating the damage to the plane. The aircraft is one of three WB-57 aircraft the agency has that are used for high-altitude monitoring of launches and reentries. [KHOU-TV Houston]
| | | | | | Expensive Cows
| "If there was a launch and something were to go wrong, we're very fortunate that all of the folks underneath us are cows, and that's the extent of it. If they hit a cow, that's going to be the most expensive cow ever."
| | – Francisco Pallarres, director of business development at Spaceport America in New Mexico, during a panel at the Global Spaceport Alliance's Spaceport Summit on Tuesday.
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