Astronomy Prints 🌌: A playbook for building satellites faster

A SpaceNews daily newsletter

04/09/2025

Top Stories

SpaceX won most of the first year of launches assigned under the new National Security Space Launch (NSSL) contract. SpaceX received seven of the nine launches in fiscal year 2025 for the NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 contracts awarded last week, with ULA getting the other two. Industry sources said two of the SpaceX launches, a pair of NRO missions, were originally assigned to ULA but moved to SpaceX due to ongoing construction and upgrades at ULA's West Coast launch facility for its Vulcan rocket. The Space Force says that ULA launch site is not yet certified. The NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2 contracts include 54 launches over five years for SpaceX, ULA and Blue Origin. [SpaceNews]

The head of U.S. Space Command said preparing for war in space is required to deter space-based aggression. In a speech at Space Symposium Tuesday, Gen. Stephen Whiting said that while the U.S. does not seek conflict in space, it is preparing for it to prevent adversaries from gaining an upper hand. The U.S. is prioritizing capabilities such as advanced surveillance tools, maneuverable satellites and on-orbit defensive and offensive systems. He disclosed in his speech a new milestone in allied space cooperation: a bilateral proximity operation between the U.S. and France involving a rendezvous near a "strategic competitor spacecraft." [SpaceNews]

Space Systems Command announced a new intelligence-sharing program aimed at warning commercial satellite operators about potential threats to their orbital assets. The "Orbital Watch" will distribute unclassified threat data to more than 900 space companies registered through the command's "Front Door" portal even if the companies do not have security clearances. The initiative comes amid growing concerns about threats to space assets, from physical attacks to jamming and cyberattacks. [SpaceNews]

Millennium Space Systems is nearly doubling its satellite manufacturing capacity. Leaders at the company, a Boeing subsidiary that focuses on smaller satellites for defense applications, said they want to increase production from one to two satellites each month to six to 12 each month. The main catalyst for expansion is a $414 million contract to build and operate eight "Foo Fighter" missile-tracking satellites equipped with advanced infrared sensors. The company is also working on a nearly billion-dollar order for 12 missile-tracking satellites for the U.S. Space Force that will operate in medium Earth orbit as well as other classified work. [SpaceNews]

Other companies are pushing toward the capability for continuous satellite production. That effort is a major shift for an industry that has traditionally operated on a lumpy production cycle, building large, exquisite systems on a decade-scale cadence, executives of several manufacturers said at Space Symposium Tuesday. Reaching that continuous production rate is still several years away, in part because their supply chains also need to scale up production of key components. [SpaceNews]

L3Harris is shifting to automated processes for a new facility that will produce weather satellite instruments. The new $125 million factory in Indiana, scheduled to open next week, is a paperless facility designed for automated manufacturing, the company said. It will produce instruments for the next generation of NOAA geostationary weather satellites as well as Japan's Himawari-10 weather satellite. [SpaceNews]

Umbra won a contract to develop next-generation maritime surveillance satellites. The company, known as a developer of radar mapping spacecraft, said Tuesday it was selected to develop these satellites under a public-private agreement known as Strategic Funding Increase that could be valued at up to $60 million pending final contracting and co-investment commitments. The funding will go towards next-generation sensor satellites aimed at enhancing maritime and open-ocean search capabilities for the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific. [SpaceNews]

Astroscale U.S. will refuel two Space Force spacecraft on a mission launching next year. The company said Tuesday its APS-R spacecraft, scheduled to launch in the summer of 2026, will first refuel one of the satellites in the Space Force's upcoming Tetra-5 mission, then refuel another, unidentified spacecraft. Between the two fuelings, APS-R will top off its own hydrazine tanks using an Orbit Fab propellant depot. Those refuelings will take place just above the GEO belt. The refuelings are part of efforts to demonstrate "sustained maneuverability" in space. [SpaceNews]

Space robotics company GITAI has created a defense-focused subsidiary. GITAI, founded in Japan but now based in California, said the new GITAI Defense and Space subsidiary will seek work from the Defense Department and other U.S. government agencies. The subsidiary's ownership structure is set up to qualify it for U.S. government work, given that GITAI itself still has majority ownership by Japanese companies and individuals. [SpaceNews]

Other News

NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman is expected to emphasize Mars missions in his confirmation hearing this morning. In written testimony, Isaacman states that NASA will "prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars" but will have "the capabilities to return to the moon" as well. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which will hold the hearing, said earlier this week he had been reassured by Isaacman that the Trump administration will seek to return humans to the moon before the end of Trump's term. [Reuters]

Redwire is partnering with ispace U.S. on lunar lander missions. The two companies announced a memorandum of understanding Tuesday where Redwire will contribute technologies and facilities for lunar landers that ispace U.S. develops. The companies intend to compete for future NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services missions, but also see increased commercial interest in lunar spacecraft. [SpaceNews]

Other lunar lander developers also see growing interest in such missions outside of NASA. Intuitive Machines said 10% of the revenue from its recent IM-2 lander mission came from international space agencies, universities, companies and rideshare customers. Intuitive and other companies said at a Space Symposium panel that commercial interest in lunar missions remains nascent, but is growing. [SpaceNews]

Intuitive Machines selected SpaceX to launch its fourth lunar lander mission. Intuitive Machines said Tuesday it selected SpaceX's Falcon 9 to launch the IM-4 mission in 2027. The company used the Falcon 9 for its first two lander missions and will also launch its IM-3 lander mission on that rocket next year. In addition to the IM-4 lander, the launch will also carry two satellites as part of Intuitive's deployment of a five-satellite constellation for data relay services at the moon. [Intuitive Machines]

Danish smallsat manufacturer GomSpace will use space traffic management tools from Portugal's Neuraspace. The companies announced the partnership Tuesday where GomSpace's Hands-Off Operations Platform (HOOP), a system designed to automate spacecraft management tasks, will incorporate Neuraspace's artificial intelligence-driven satellite tracking capabilities. HOOP users would receive automated conjunction alerts and optimized collision-avoidance maneuver recommendations as part of their service from GomSpace. [SpaceNews]

Space nuclear power and propulsion technologies are finally poised for a breakthrough, provided the U.S. government maintains interest. Companies in the field, like L3Harris, believe that nuclear electric propulsion and nuclear thermal propulsion are on the cusp of flight demonstrations in the next few years. Such technologies have long promised far greater in-space propulsion capabilities, but are now benefiting from interest by agencies such as NASA and DARPA. That interest needs to be maintained, industry officials said, to keep those technologies' development on track. [SpaceNews]

Recent tests have proven the feasibility of optical intersatellite links involving cubesats. The Aerospace Corporation and Spire Global announced similar, but independent, on-orbit tests of optical links involving cubesats earlier this year. While optical links have long been used with larger spacecraft, these tests show the technology can be used on much smaller satellites despite challenges like pointing accuracy and limited power. [SpaceNews]

NOAA has backed off from plans to defer maintenance on polar-orbiting weather satellites. A recent internal memo has called for a "minimum mission operations approach" for the two Joint Polar Satellite System spacecraft to save money, a move some worried could lead to technical problems that would interrupt service. NOAA now says it will not change its operations of those satellites but declined to provide details about that decision and its cost. [E&E News]

Bangladesh is the latest country to sign the Artemis Accords. Bangladeshi government officials signed the Accords at a ceremony in the capital of Dhaka Tuesday, making Bangladesh the 54th country to sign. Bangladesh is the second country to join this year after Finland in January. [NASA]

Punk'd

"I actually went down to my neighbor's house and I was helping her with a project at her house, and this was around 3, 3:30 in the afternoon. I had only brought my personal phone with me, and I start getting texts from my chief of staff, and he's saying stuff like, 'Hey, your name appeared and you're acting administrator.' I thought he was punking me. I thought it was a joke, and I'm texting him back, 'Ha ha, this is very funny.' And he's like, 'No, I'm serious,' and I still didn't think he was serious. He finally called me and said, 'Yes, this is absolutely true, there's words, documentation coming out from the White House that you're named the acting administrator.' And I was like, 'What?'"

– NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro, discussing at the 40th Space Symposium on Tuesday about how she learned on the afternoon of Jan. 20 that she had been named acting administrator.