Plus: Figuring out which military tasks to automate in space
SpaceNews journalists are reporting from SmallSat 2025, held for the first time in Salt Lake City, Utah. We'll be bringing conference highlights to your inbox. For full coverage, go to spacenews.com/small-satellite-2025.
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| By Jeff Foust A year after announcing plans to offer rideshare missions to geostationary orbit, Impulse Space says the demand has been strong enough to plan an annual series of them.
At last year's Small Satellite Conference, Impulse Space said it would offer rideshare missions to GEO using its high-energy Helios orbital transfer vehicle under development. The company said it was prompted to offer the service by the number of "microGEO" spacecraft under development with masses of one ton or less.
"We're going to gauge the demand and see if it's real," Tom Mueller, founder and chief executive of Impulse Space, said at the time.
A year later, Impulse has concluded the demand is real. "Twelve months ago, we got up here and we were saying that we think there is a market for GEO rideshare," said Joshua Rea, director of commercial sales at Impulse, during an Aug. 12 presentation at the Small Satellite Conference here. "Twelve months on, there's a real market need."
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| SpaceX senior sales manager for rideshare Ronnie Foreman said that "bridge contracts," akin to flying standby on an airline, has been an increasingly popular way for the company to accommodate rideshare customers on earlier flights than they'd otherwise be able to book.
For military space, what tasks should be automated? It's easy to talk about satellite autonomy but significant work remains to determine exactly which tasks should be handled by machines, according to speakers at SmallSat 2025 Conference.
Rogue Space Systems is reorganizing to prepare for growth in its space logistics business and a double launch in 2027. The staff of the 30-person New Hampshire company will expand about 30 percent in the next quarter. | | |
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| Mission Control Space Services is inviting organizations to test machine-learning models on the Canadian startup's Persistence mission launched in June. Fees to test models on Mission Control's Marsupial flight computer will range from the "low tens to low hundreds of thousands" of dollars, Andrew Macdonald, Mission Control director of AI and autonomy, said Aug. 11.
Norway's Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) is preparing to expand its small satellite footprint over the Arctic amid rising surveillance and communications needs in the increasingly strategic region. New shipping routes and the vulnerability of undersea infrastructure are increasing pressure on NATO allies and partners to maintain persistent coverage in the High North. | | |
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 | Gabe Zimmerman on customer needs and scaling SmallSat production: In the latest episode of the Space Minds podcast, host Mike Gruss talks to Gabe Zimmerman, the director of in-space at Ursa Major, about the small satellite industry's evolving priorities, from balancing cost and reliability to overcoming persistent supply chain challenges | | |
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