Plus: Satellite maker Apex's valuation nearly doubles
Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, NASA abandoned its plans to develop a core module for commercial space stations, Apex's valuation rose to $2.3 billion, Muon unveiled a Starship-class satellite platform and more.
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OUR TOP STORY
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By Jeff Foust NASA is withdrawing a proposal to revamp its strategy for transitioning from the International Space Station to commercial stations, one that had been sharply criticized by the companies developing such stations.
In a June 1 statement, NASA press secretary Bethany Stevens said the agency was effectively abandoning a proposal to develop a new “core module” for the ISS that commercial modules could attach to.
NASA floated the proposal at its Ignition event in March, arguing that the market for commercial space stations had not developed as NASA had anticipated. The government-owned core module, the agency argued, could provide a bridge to standalone commercial stations.
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CIVIL
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NASA announced June 3 the end of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission when a review board concluded that the Mars orbiter was in an unrecoverable state after suffering some kind of anomaly in December.
China is establishing an industrial policy framework to support a push to build space-based computing infrastructure, with the emergence of influential coordinating bodies. The Space Computing Working Committee of the China Computer Industry Association held its inaugural meeting in Beijing June 3.
NASA is working on a streamlined management approach for a nuclear electric propulsion demonstration mission the agency wants to launch in two and a half years. The rapid schedule for SR-1 Freedom is enabled by using existing hardware. The electric propulsion system built for the lunar Gateway will be repurposed for the mission.
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LAUNCH
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AST SpaceMobile expects Blue Origin’s recent launchpad explosion will delay its direct-to-smartphone constellation by three to six months, investment bank William Blair said in an equity research note, pushing initial commercial services into the first half of 2027.
Construction of the Shanghai-led Qianfan constellation continued to accelerate this week with a pair of Long March launches, following on from two recent experimental flights.
China conducted the maiden launch of its reusable Long March 12B rocket June 1, providing no advance warning and delivering operational payloads to orbit. There were no apparent airspace notices issued ahead of the launch, though previous reporting stated that the rocket had recently been sighted being vertical on its pad. |
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COMMERCIAL
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Apex has raised more than $200 million to expand in-house satellite production capabilities, announcing a funding round June 5 it says nearly doubled the four-year-old manufacturer’s valuation to $2.3 billion.
Muon Space announced a Starship-class satellite platform June 3 designed from the ground up to meet the demands of the emerging orbital data center market, with an initial launch slated for 2028 after securing customers.
Voyager Technologies will acquire Astrobotic, a company developing lunar landers and reusable suborbital vehicles, in a deal worth up to $300 million. Voyager will spend $162 million in cash and stock for Astrobotic, along with assuming $9 million in debt. |
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SPONSORED CONTENT
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By Voyager Technologies Missile defense has traditionally been framed around detection, tracking and interception. Golden Dome changes that calculus, broadening the focus to the entire distributed infrastructure enabling the architecture, placing propulsion front and center.
The system envisions a constellation of thousands of satellites equipped with sensors and interceptors that would represent the first U.S. space weapons in orbit, with data centers in space providing automated command and control through a cross-domain AI-enabled network. But the effectiveness of that architecture ultimately depends on whether satellites can maneuver in contested space and whether interceptors can maintain precise control at critical moments. |
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FROM SPACENEWS |
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