| By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Starlink's global outage, industry sounds the alarm on ISS budget cuts, Spire offers new defense services and more.
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| | | | | | Top Stories
SpaceX's Starlink service is back online after a global outage Thursday. Users reported the service went down around 3:15 p.m. Eastern, and was offline for users around the world for about two and a half hours. SpaceX said that a "failure of key internal software services that operate the core network" caused the outage but did not provide further details. The outage was one of the longest for Starlink, which has more than six million customers worldwide, since beginning commercial service. [The Verge]
Industry officials say that budget cuts to the ISS could have severe consequences. During a panel at the AIAA ASCEND conference Thursday, executives said that the proposed fiscal year 2026 cuts, which reduce the station's budget by 25%, exacerbate shortfalls from previous years that have reduced cargo deliveries to the station. The suggested cuts, some warned, could slash research being conducted on the station and turn astronauts into "custodians and caretakers of a mothballed facility." That has implications for the transition to commercial stations and as well as for geopolitics, as companies and countries turn to China's Tiangong station. Appropriations bills pending in Congress would reject the proposed cuts, but may not fully resolve the station's budget crunch. [SpaceNews]
Lockheed Martin is studying offering the Orion spacecraft as a commercial service. A company official said at the ASCEND conference Wednesday that Lockheed is considering a shift to a services model for Orion based on language in the administration's budget request that called for canceling SLS and Orion after Artemis 3 and using commercial transportation services instead. Lockheed is studying just how a services contract would work, including what capabilities to incorporate that NASA currently provides. That approach could also open the door to non-NASA uses of Orion, although Lockheed expects NASA to remain the primary user of the spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
Spire Global is now offering new radio-frequency (RF) intelligence products for defense and security markets. The new data products include tools designed to process unencrypted, publicly broadcast voice transmissions in near real time, producing transcriptions, translations and summaries. It can also trigger third-party satellite imagery to visually confirm activity on the ground. RF detection, involving monitoring signals emitted by radios, radars, ship transponders and other communication systems, has become a vital tool for military and intelligence operations. Spire's new tools leverage artificial intelligence to boost the value of that RF data. [SpaceNews]
A British company plans to expand a network of telescopes to provide space situational awareness services. Spaceflux said Thursday it received $7.3 million from the U.K. Innovation & Science Seed Fund to expand its global telescope network. Spaceflux currently operates 15 optical and infrared telescopes across the globe that can track objects from low Earth orbit to cislunar space, and plans to install 10 more by next year. The SSA data from Spaceflux could augment European capabilities to monitor space objects and reduce reliance on the United States. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | | Other News
A Soyuz rocket launched a space science mission and other smallsats early Friday. The Soyuz-2.1b rocket lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East region at 1:54 a.m. Eastern. Its primary payload was a pair of Ionosfera-M satellites, placed in an 800-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit to make space weather measurements. The launch also carried 18 cubesat secondary payloads, 17 from Russian institutions and one from Iran. [NASASpaceFlight.com]
Senegal is the latest nation to sign the Artemis Accords. The head of the African nation's space agency signed the Accords during a ceremony Thursday at NASA Headquarters. Senegal is the 56th nation overall, and fourth this year, to sign the document, which outlines best practices for safe and sustainable space exploration. Some see the signing as a way for the United States to counter growing Chinese space diplomacy in Africa. [SpaceNews]
A French government official says plans for a combination of major European space companies is making progress. French industry minister Marc Ferracci said Thursday that discussions about a combination of the space businesses at Airbus Defence and Space, Leonardo and Thales Alenia Space were "moving forward in a constructive manner" but didn't elaborate on the specifics of those discussions. The proposed combination, sometimes referred to as Project Bromo, is intended to help Europe better compete with the United States in satellite manufacturing. The CEO of Leonardo said last month that he expected the companies to reach a "go/no-go" decision on Project Bromo by the end of July. [Reuters]
India's satellite navigation system is at minimal levels of operation. Indian government documents show that four of 11 satellites in the Navigation with Indian Constellation, or NavIC, system are fully operational, the minimum needed to provide navigation services in and around India. Of those four, one is already beyond its 10-year design life and another is nearing 10 years in orbit. One replacement NavIC satellite, NVS-02, launched in January but a propulsion malfunction stranded it in a transfer orbit that prevents it from providing services. [WION]
An "arsenic life" study that NASA hailed 15 years ago as a key development in astrobiology has been retracted. The study, published by the journal Science in 2010, found that microbes in a California lake were able to use arsenic in place of phosphorus in DNA and proteins. NASA, who funded the research, said at the time that the discovery "broadens our thinking about the possibility of life on other planets." However, other scientists were not able to replicate the findings and Science announced Thursday it was formally retracting the paper, citing "flawed data" but noting there was no evidence of misconduct. Scientists involved in the original paper opposed the move to retract the study, stating they stand by the results they published. [Science]
| | | | | | Valves
| "One thing for sure, any time you do anything new in space, you're going to find out there's yet another way a valve can fail."
| | – Nick Cummings, senior director of civil and national security space at SpaceX, during a panel discussion on Mars exploration at the AIAA ASCEND conference Thursday.
| | | | | | | 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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