Astronomy Prints 🌌: Trump names a leader for Golden Dome

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05/21/2025

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The National Reconnaissance Office may cut its budget for purchasing commercial imagery by a third. Companies that work with the NRO said they have been informed that the agency might cut its projected $450 million budget for buying commercial imagery, an issue that came up during a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week. The potential cuts would impact providers who are part of the Electro-Optical Commercial Layer (EOCL) contract, a nearly $4 billion, 10-year initiative launched in 2022 and includes Maxar, BlackSky and Planet. Companies said privately that cuts of this magnitude would be a stunning reversal of policy and clashes with public rhetoric by the current administration about leveraging commercial capabilities. [SpaceNews]

President Trump has named a Space Force general to lead the Golden Dome missile defense program. Trump announced Tuesday that Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, would oversee Golden Dome, citing experience that includes past roles as head of Space Systems Command and deputy director of the NRO. Trump also said that Golden Dome would be completed before the end of his term and cost $175 billion, far less than recent estimates that it would cost around $500 billion or even in the trillions of dollars. [SpaceNews]

NASA says long-running budget shortfalls have led it to consider reducing the crew on the International Space Station. At a briefing Tuesday, NASA's ISS program manager said that "a cumulative multi-year budget reduction" for ISS operations has shrunk the number of cargo flights and amount of cargo being delivered to the station. As a result, NASA has been considering options that would reduce the crew size on the U.S. segment of the station from four astronauts to three. That analysis predates the fiscal year 2026 budget proposal released earlier this month that mentioned crew and research reductions on the ISS triggered by a proposed $500 million budget cut. NASA is still awaiting the full 2026 budget request to examine its impacts on ISS operations. [SpaceNews]

MDA Space has raised its bid for Israeli satellite chipmaker SatixFy in response to a competing proposal. MDA announced in April that it would buy SatixFy for $2.10 per share and pay off its debt, but during a "go-shop" period as part of the agreement, SatixFy received a bid from an undisclosed entity offering $2.53 per share. MDA said Tuesday that while it disputed the validity of that acquisition proposal, it nonetheless raised its own offer to $3 per share. The amended deal, backed by investors representing 57% of SatixFy's shares, prevents the company from considering further acquisition proposals. [SpaceNews]

Starfish Space is ready to launch its second mission to attempt a docking in space. The startup said Tuesday its Otter Pup 2 spacecraft is ready to launch next month on the SpaceX Transporter-14 mission. Otter Pup 2 will approach a D-Orbit ION orbital transfer vehicle also on the same launch, docking with the vehicle. Starfish says the mission will demonstrate its ability to safely approach another spacecraft and dock with an unprepared vehicle, without the use of a specific docking interface. Starfish attempted to test those technologies on its original Otter Pup mission two years ago, but problems with the orbital transfer vehicle carrying it prevented a docking attempt. [SpaceNews]

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is calling for faster adoption of AI technologies in geospatial intelligence. NGA Deputy Director Brett Markham said at the GEOINT Symposium this week that the agency is making strides with AI but emphasized that full-scale adoption is still a work in progress. NGA has been working on incorporating AI since 2017 through a program called Maven that incorporated computer vision into defense intelligence workflows. He said NGA seeks to accelerate the integration of AI across analytical and operational processes, and wants AI not just in object recognition, but embedded throughout its data collection and orchestration systems. [SpaceNews]

Other News

China launched a communications satellite Tuesday. A Long March 7A rocket lifted off from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island at 7:50 a.m. Eastern and placed into orbit the ChinaSat-3B communications satellite. ChinaSat-3B will provide a variety of communications services, but Chinese officials provided few details about those services. Some ChinaSat satellites likely have military or intelligence applications, such as secure communications for the People's Liberation Army. [SpaceNews]

A commercial Chinese rocket returned to flight early Wednesday. A Kinetica-1 solid-fuel rocket launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at 12:05 a.m. Eastern carrying six satellites, including two imaging satellites for Minospace. The launch was the first for Kinetica-1, also known as Lijian-1, since a failure in December. [Xinhua]

SpaceX launched a set of Starlink satellites Tuesday night after a one-day delay. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:19 p.m. Eastern, placing 23 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was scheduled for Monday night but scrubbed about two and a half minutes before liftoff because of an unspecified issue. The launch was the first for this Falcon 9 booster. [Space.com]

Hyperspectral imagery startup Kuva Space is preparing to launch its second satellite. The Finnish company said its Hyperfield-1B spacecraft, a 6U cubesat, is manifested on the Transporter-14 rideshare mission launching next month. Kuva Space, which launched its first satellite last year, has long-term plans for a 100-satellite constellation for "almost real-time" hyperspectral imagery. The company is moving into the maritime domain awareness market, using its imagery to help identify "dark vessels" that do not have tracking transponders. [SpaceNews]

Another hyperspectral imagery company is adding to its free collection of such images. Canada's Wyvern has added 25 images to its Open Data Program, an effort to help catalyze interest in hyperspectral imagery and its applications. Imagery of Iran's Shahid Rajaei Port after an April explosion shows, for example, how hyperspectral sensors can identify and map chemical residue, detect contaminated soil and water, assess damage to infrastructure and determine fire intensity. Wyvern has four instruments in orbit including Dragonette-004 onboard Loft Orbital's YAM-8 mission launched in March. [SpaceNews]

Argentina will fly a cubesat on the Artemis 2 mission. NASA said Tuesday it signed an agreement with Argentina's space agency, CONAE, to fly its ATENEA cubesat as a secondary payload on the Artemis 2 launch next year. ATENEA will collect radiation data in Earth orbit and test a long-range communications link. NASA previously announced agreements with Germany, Saudi Arabia and South Korea to fly cubesats from those countries on Artemis 2. [NASA]

Budget cuts could slow momentum on commercial adoption. Former NGA director Robert Cardillo voiced concern over what he called a disconnect between the intelligence community's embrace of commercial solutions and the reality of shrinking budgets. On the Space Minds podcast, he noted growing optimism around AI adoption within NGA, calling modern tools "super interns" that enhance rather than replace analysts. [SpaceNews]

Boring Moon

"The moon can't just be for us engineers. If so, it might be a boring place."

– John Couluris, senior vice president of lunar permanence at Blue Origin, in a speech Tuesday at the spring meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium.

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