| By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: A-Rod strikes out with Lynk, current and former NASA employees register dissent with agency plans, NISAR gets a launch date and more.
Also, SpaceX has reshaped the global space industry with a speed and scale few thought possible. A new intelligence report from SpaceNews, "Understanding the SpaceX-Era Economy," explores how SpaceX upended traditional launch markets by scaling reusability, slashing costs and normalizing frequent access to orbit. If someone forwarded you this edition, sign up to receive it directly in your inbox every weekday. Have thoughts or feedback? You can hit reply to let me know directly.
| | | | | | Top Stories
Lynk Global has ended plans to go public through a SPAC merger. The company said Monday that it reached an agreement with Slam Corp., the SPAC founded by former baseball player Alex Rodriguez, to break off the planned merger. Slam had recently filed suit against Lynk in a bid to keep Lynk from walking away from the merger, announced nearly a year and a half ago. The companies did not disclose details about the breakup agreement. Lynk had initially expected the SPAC deal to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to fund development of a satellite constellation to provide direct-to-device services, but Slam had lost all but $23.7 million of its SPAC proceeds due to shareholder redemptions. Meanwhile, Lynk has raised at least $85 million in a Series B round from investors that include satellite operator SES, which is now reportedly Lynk's second-largest shareholder. [SpaceNews]
The director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is resigning. NASA announced Monday that Makenzie Lystrup would step down as Goddard director, effective Aug. 1. NASA did not disclose the reason for her departure. Lystrup, a former Ball Aerospace executive, became Goddard director in April 2023. She is the second center director to depart in recent months, after Laurie Leshin left JPL in May. The announcement came the same day as hundreds of current and former NASA employees released the "Voyager Declaration," a document styled as a formal dissent to NASA budget cuts, proposed mission terminations and workforce reductions. Many of the signatories are anonymous, citing "the culture of fear of retaliation," but those who did disclose their names include several former astronauts and former top-level agency officials. [SpaceNews]
The Space Force conducted a wargame earlier this month to test how commercial space companies could augment military capabilities in a crisis. The two-day exercise marked the second in a series of Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) wargames designed to refine how the military could leverage private sector space assets during conflicts or emergencies, with a focus in this wargame on space domain awareness. The Space Force last year awarded contracts collectively worth $1.1 million to four undisclosed space monitoring companies for CASR wargaming. The scenario tested how CASR contracts might be activated to track such events and coordinate responses when satellites face destruction from debris impacts or intentional actions. [SpaceNews]
The NRO has extended a contract with Hydrosat for thermal imagery data. The new agreement, announced Monday, grants the agency access to data from Hydrosat's first two satellite missions. Those spacecraft are designed to detect minute temperature variations on the Earth's surface, and can be used by defense agencies for nighttime ship tracking, monitoring industrial activity and identifying construction of new infrastructure. [SpaceNews]
An Earth science mission jointly developed by NASA and the Indian space agency ISRO is finally ready for launch. The agencies announced Monday that the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission will launch July 30 on an Indian GSLV Mark 2 rocket. NISAR carries L- and S-band radar antennas for studying land and ice surfaces, mapping them worldwide twice every 12 days. NASA and ISRO are pressing ahead with the launch despite the failure of a PSLV launch in May and an anomaly on an Indian spacecraft launched in January. NASA deferred to ISRO at a press conference Monday about how it concluded it was safe to proceed with the NISAR launch. ISRO was not represented at the briefing. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | | Other News
SpaceX scrubbed the launch of a pair of SES satellites at nearly the last second Monday. SpaceX called a hold in the Falcon 9 launch of the two O3b mPower satellites about 11 seconds before their scheduled liftoff from Cape Canaveral late Monday afternoon. SpaceX did not disclose the reason for the abort, but said the payload and rocket are healthy and rescheduled the launch for Tuesday. [Spaceflight Now]
Iran performed a suborbital test flight of its Qased launch vehicle. The flight, announced Monday by a semi-official news agency, was designed to "improve the performance" of the vehicle, but with no additional details about the launch. Qased has been used for three orbital launches of small reconnaissance satellites since 2020. [Reuters]
Norway and Sweden are sparring over plans for orbital launches from a Swedish site. Norway's aerospace regulator warned that proposed launches from Kiruna, in northern Sweden, posed risks to Norway. Proposed orbital launches from Kiruna would travel over northern Norway, raising concerns should the vehicles malfunction. Swedish officials countered that the Norwegian assessment is faulty and is an effort by Norway to "veto" Swedish launches while promoting its own launch site at Andøya in northern Norway. [The Times of London]
Eutelsat will provide broadband services to the U.K. government. The company announced Monday a deal to provide connectivity through its OneWeb constellation to British embassies, consulates and other offices worldwide. The announcement comes not long after the U.K. government agreed to increase its investment in Eutelsat to maintain a roughly 10% stake. [Eutelsat]
A crypto billionaire who paid $28 million for a seat on the first crewed New Shepard flight is finally going to space. Blue Origin announced the people flying on its next New Shepard mission, NS-34, on Monday, a lineup that includes Justin Sun. In 2021, Sun was the winning bidder for a seat on the first crewed New Shepard flight, but backed out because of what the company said were scheduling conflicts. Sun and Blue Origin later announced plans for a dedicated New Shepard flight, but instead Sun will fly with five other people on NS-34. Sun gained his wealth through cryptocurrency ventures, but until recently had been under federal investigation for market manipulation and unregistered sale of securities. Blue Origin did not announce a date for the NS-34 launch, but the company usually makes crew announcements within a couple weeks of the launch. [GeekWire]
| | | | | | Not Rocket Science
| "I have a saying, which I stole from Wayne Hale back in the shuttle program, that you don't need to be an engineer to go to space. You need to be a meteorologist, because it's all about the weather, and you need to be a psychologist, because it's all about the people."
| | – Mike Moses of Virgin Galactic during a panel discussion at a Purdue University event in Washington on Sunday marking the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.
| | | | | | | FROM SPACENEWS |  | | Fact or fiction on the future of the space economy: Drawing from their new book Space to Grow, authors Matthew Weinzierl (Harvard Business School) and Brendan Rosseau (Blue Origin) discuss how market dynamics, shifting public-sector priorities, and defense investments are driving a new era of space activity. Whether you're a policymaker, investor, operator, or observer, this Space Minds episode captures the critical questions facing the future of space enterprise. | | | | | | | 🚀 🕑 🎧 Don't miss SpaceNews' FirstUp Audio
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