| The former head of space acquisition at the Pentagon has joined startup True Anomaly. The company announced Tuesday that Frank Calvelli, until recently the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, had joined its board of directors. True Anomaly specializes in advanced space domain awareness and military training satellites with its Jackal spacecraft, designed for rendezvous and proximity operations. The move follows the recent hiring of another former defense official, Stephen Kitay, as senior vice president at True Anomaly. [SpaceNews]
Two Chinese commercial cargo spacecraft are scheduled to fly to the Tiangong space station this year. The Haolong cargo space shuttle from the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute under the Aviation Industry Corporation will launch on Landspace's Zhuque-3 rocket, according to a recent Chinese report. The reusable Haolong will be 10 meters in length, around 7,000 kilograms in mass, and capable of landing on a runway. The Qingzhou cargo spacecraft from the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will launch on the first flight of the CAS Space Kinetica-2 (Lijian-2) rocket no earlier than September. The missions aim to provide flexible options and redundancy for supplying the Tiangong space station, while also illustrating the expansion and progress made by Chinese commercial space actors and other non-traditional space entities. [SpaceNews]
The UAE has selected Thales Alenia Space to build an airlock module for the lunar Gateway. Thales and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre signed a contract Tuesday to build the airlock module, allowing astronauts there to perform spacewalks and access science payloads on the Gateway's exterior. Thales is building several other components of the Gateway, a crew-tended facility that will operate in lunar orbit and serve as a staging point for missions to the lunar surface. The contract comes amid speculation that the Trump administration may do away with the Gateway as part of sweeping changes in the Artemis architecture. [SpaceNews]
The frenzy of SPAC deals in the space industry several years ago was "crazy" but ultimately good for the industry overall, says Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck. In a keynote at the Smallsat Symposium Tuesday, Beck said that many companies went public through mergers with SPACs that should not have done so. That was part of a wave of investment that he said meant that even "silly ideas" got funded. However, he said that influx of capital into the industry was good, resulting in "a much higher quality of company" for those that survived. Rocket Lab is one company that went public through a SPAC merger, and its share price has soared in the last several months. He predicted that there will be consolidation in the industry this year, with large "legacy players" combining to remain competitive while smaller companies merge to fuel their growth. [SpaceNews]
The shift toward standardized, modular satellite platforms used for multiple missions is reshaping the role of vertical integration. A panel at the Smallsat Symposium Tuesday noted that companies are increasingly adopting a common platform and swapping out payloads to meet different customer needs. This shift is refueling a long-running debate over whether owning every part of the supply chain is the most effective way to control cost and performance in the space industry, with some manufacturers deciding to instead use a diversified supplier base to balance standardization with flexibility. [SpaceNews]
French satellite propulsion company ThrustMe is making a push into the U.S. market. The company said Tuesday it has signed deals with a diverse set of U.S. firms ranging from startups to Terran Orbital, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, to provide them with electric propulsion systems. The company has developed thrusters that can use iodine as propellant, and has delivered more than 150 thrusters since moving to industrial-scale propulsion in 2023. [SpaceNews]
The top Democrat on the House Science Committee is asking NASA and other agencies for information on how they are implementing Trump administration executive orders. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), ranking member of the committee, said Monday she sent letters to NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro and the heads of the Department of Energy, NOAA, NIST and NSF about their work to carry out executive orders to end diversity programs and hiring efforts. Lofgren said in the NASA letter she was "disturbed" that NASA was implementing the measures "without pushback or protest." She asked NASA for details on how it was implementing the orders by the end of next week. [SpaceNews]
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