By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: the satellite industry copes with the expected end of the Falcon 9, Golden Dome's phased approach, signs of a GEO renaissance and more.
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Top Stories
The satellite industry is coming to terms with the likely retirement of the Falcon 9 from the commercial launch market. At last week's World Space Business Week conference, industry officials said it is now all but impossible to order a Falcon 9 for commercial missions, following on SpaceX's move earlier this year to end its rideshare launch program in late 2028 or early 2029. That has prompted a scramble for capacity as companies look for alternative vehicles, with some calling the situation a "panic" among launch customers. The problem is expected to be most significant around the end of the decade as Falcon 9 commercial launches end and new vehicles slowly start to ramp up launch activity. [SpaceNews]
Pentagon officials say the Golden Dome missile defense system will be built out in phases through 2035. Gen. Michael Guetlein, head of the Golden Dome missile defense program, said recently that the Pentagon is taking a two-stage approach, planning to stitch together existing military systems for an initial missile shield in 2028 before transitioning to a more affordable architecture designed specifically for homeland defense by 2035. The strategy helps explain how the Pentagon intends to meet an aggressive fielding schedule without waiting for an entirely new generation of weapons and sensors. By relying first on existing systems, the Pentagon aims to meet the 2028 target while keeping Golden Dome within Guetlein's estimate of about $185 billion over the coming decade. [SpaceNews]
NASA awarded SpaceX three more Crew Dragon ISS missions to the International Space Station. The agency said Friday it modified SpaceX's existing contract for crew transportation by adding the Crew-15, 16 and 17 missions at a price of $946 million. SpaceX's contract for developing and operating Crew Dragon for the ISS is now valued at $5.92 billion. NASA said in May it would add up to six Crew Dragon missions to the contract, citing delays in bringing Boeing's CST-100 Starliner into service. NASA is reportedly in talks with Boeing about a contract for 10 or more Starliner missions , citing SpaceX's expected retirement of the Crew Dragon. The report did not state what the missions would be used for but could involve taking NASA astronauts to future commercial stations. [SpaceNews | Wall Street Journal]
The third and final terabit-class ViaSat-3 broadband satellite has entered service over the Americas. ViaSat said last week that ViaSat-3 F2 started commercial service over the Americas, a month after ViaSat-3 F3 began service over Asia. ViaSat-3 F2 was originally slated to serve Europe, the Middle East and Africa but was moved to the Americas after a problem with the first ViaSat-3 satellite reduced its capacity by more than 90%. That comes as SES completes deployment of the last O3b mPower broadband satellites in medium Earth orbit, with the final three launched earlier this month. Those three are due to enter service in mid-2027, joining 10 already in operation for services SES says range from tens of megabits to multiple gigabits per second of capacity, depending on the needs of enterprise and government customers. [SpaceNews]
There are early signs of a resurgence in communications satellites destined for commercial customers in GEO. A total of 14 orders have been announced this year, according to Novaspace, more than the 10 recorded for all of 2025. That is the highest level in a decade other than the 18 ordered in 2020 as part of a C-band replacement cycle in the United States. Three of the 14 ordered this year are likely tied to a separate plan to auction upper C-band next year as SES plans seven satellites total for the transition. While the resurgence is welcomed by manufacturers, they said they don't expect the market to return to levels from more than a decade ago when 20 or more satellite orders per year was the norm. [SpaceNews]
The Space Force is planning a network of GEO satellites to monitor activity there. Under a program named SG-XX the Space Force is planning a surveillance constellation to detect and track spacecraft around geosynchronous orbit. A key feature of SG-XX is that the satellites would communicate directly with one another, allowing surveillance data to move across the constellation and reach military operators quickly. The satellites would carry wide-field optical sensors capable of searching large areas of space for objects and maintaining tracks on them. SG-XX is one of two new Space Force programs intended to expand surveillance and reconnaissance in geosynchronous orbit as China and other countries field more capable spacecraft there. The other, RG-XX, is a separate but complementary constellation intended to replace the Space Force's Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, or GSSAP, satellites. [SpaceNews]
The Defense Innovation Unit has selected Northrop Grumman and True Anomaly to build prototype satellites for monitoring activity in GEO. The awards, announced Friday, are part of DIU's Geosynchronous High-Resolution Optical Space-Based Tactical Reconnaissance program, known as GHOST-R, which is seeking satellites capable of providing detailed space-to-space imagery and maintaining custody of friendly and adversarial spacecraft in GEO. DIU said the prototype effort is supporting the Space Systems Command office responsible for RG-XX and is intended to develop lower-cost reconnaissance satellites that could move into the broader constellation. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
Rocket Lab continued a fast pace of Electron launches with a mission Friday night. An Electron lifted off at 11:22 p.m. Eastern from New Zealand and placed into orbit a radar-imaging satellite for Synspective. The launch was the third this month for Electron and the fifth since early August. Synspective was the customer for two of the launches and iQPS, another Japanese radar-imaging company, the customer for two others; the fifth was for a confidential customer later identified as BlackSky. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX launched more Starlink satellites Saturday night. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 9:47 p.m. Eastern, putting 27 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was the 81st this year by SpaceX devoted to Starlink. [Spaceflight Now]
China performed two launches over the weekend. A Long March 2D took off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 6:50 a.m. Eastern Saturday and placed into orbit four PIESAT-2 satellites. The spacecraft are radar-imaging satellites developed by Chinese company GalaxySpace. A Lijian-1 rocket lifted off at 12:03 a.m. Eastern Sunday from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone at the Jiuquan spaceport. It placed nine satellites into orbit on a rideshare mission. [Xinhua]
A Soyuz rocket launched a Russian military satellite Friday. A Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at about 12:50 p.m. Eastern and successfully placed its payload into orbit. Russian officials did not identify the payload but the rocket's trajectory was consistent with past launches that carried Glonass navigation satellites. [RussianSpaceWeb.com]
A Progress cargo spacecraft docked with the International Space Station on Saturday. The Progress MS-35 spacecraft docked with the station's Poisk module at 9:44 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft launched Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying about three tons of cargo for the station. [NASA]
The U.S. Space Force is expanding the use of commercial satellites to detect and locate GPS jamming and other electronic interference. The effort began as a prototype focused on positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT, by the Space Force's Joint Commercial Operations Cell, or JCO. The effort has grown over the past year and accelerated during U.S. military operations against Iran, when U.S. Central Command asked the Space Force to broaden its monitoring beyond GPS into other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. JCO has established a dedicated electromagnetic spectrum operations section that continuously monitors the GPS L1 frequency worldwide and is expanding into additional GPS bands. [SpaceNews]
Space software company Sedaro will receive up to $45 million in government funding to expand a platform for coordinating satellite activities. The company was among 11 firms named last month in the latest round of SpaceWERX Strategic Funding Increase, or STRATFI, selection. The company said the funding will scale a platform already used by Space Systems Command to combine models from different programs and test how they perform together under realistic mission conditions. The goal is to give engineers and military planners a common environment for evaluating systems that are often developed and analyzed separately. [SpaceNews]
Canadian company GHGSat says a second-generation methane-monitoring satellite will be twice as sensitive as earlier spacecraft. GHGSat's Gen2 satellite, scheduled for launch in early 2028, will be able to detect methane emissions at a rate of 50 kilograms per hour compared to the 100 kilograms per hour of its current satellites. With the second generation, GHGSat's daily coverage per satellite will double from 10,000 to 20,000 square kilometers. Data will continue to be delivered to customers within 24 hours. [SpaceNews]
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The Week Ahead
Monday:
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Tuesday-Wednesday:
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FROM SPACENEWS |
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What Comes Next for On-Orbit Servicing? Join us on Wednesday, Sept. 23 for conversations about the tech, policies and business models required to build a functioning in-orbit logistics ecosystem. Col. Scott Carstetter, director of servicing, mobility, and logistics at Space Systems Command, and other experts will explore what comes next for the technologies, policies and business models required to build a functioning in-orbit logistics ecosystem. Register now. |
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