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Commercial space station developer Axiom Space replaced its CEO Wednesday. The company announced that it had appointed Jonathan Cirtain as CEO, replacing Tejpaul Bhatia. The company described the move only as a "strategic leadership change to advance the company's development of critical space infrastructure." Bhatia, who joined Axiom in 2021 as chief revenue officer, was promoted to CEO in April. Cirtain is a former executive with nuclear technology company BWXT who joined IBX, the investment company whose portfolio includes Axiom Space, as president in May. Axiom is developing a commercial space station whose first module will be attached temporarily to the ISS starting in late 2027. It is also making spacesuits for NASA's Artemis lunar exploration effort. [SpaceNews]

SpaceX launched a second set of Space Development Agency satellites Wednesday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:06 p.m. Eastern and placed 21 Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites built by Lockheed Martin into orbit. This is the second set of Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites to launch after the first set launched a month ago. The Tranche 1 constellation will feature 10 planes of satellites, six for Transport Layer communications and four for Tracking Layer missile tracking applications. [SpaceNews]

Beyond Gravity is weighing expanding solar array drive mechanism production in Florida to support Golden Dome and other U.S. space projects. The Swiss company said Wednesday it is expanding production of such mechanisms in Europe to meet demand for programs like the IRIS² secure broadband constellation. A U.S. production line would focus primarily on programs like Golden Dome and the Space Development Agency's satellite constellations. [SpaceNews]

The Artemis Accords turned five years old this week. Monday marked the fifth anniversary of a ceremony where the United States and seven other nations became the first to sign the Accords, which outline norms of behavior for space exploration. A total of 56 nations have now signed the Accords, and representatives of 39 of them met at the International Astronautical Congress two weeks ago to discuss implementation issues. Those topics ranged from noninterference and safety zones to how to encourage more nations to participate, although at a press conference after the meeting officials provided few specifics. [SpaceNews]

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China launched another set of satellites for its Guowang broadband constellation Wednesday. A Long March 8A rocket lifted off at 9:33 p.m. Eastern from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Center carrying the 12th set of Guowang satellites. Chinese officials did not disclose the number of satellites on board but previous Long March 8A launches for Guowang each carried nine satellites. The national Guowang project, led by the state-owned China SatNet, will consist of nearly 13,000 satellites in low Earth orbit and is part of China's response to Starlink. This launch will bring the constellation up to 95 satellites, with a near-term goal of having 400 satellites in orbit by 2027. This was the 600th launch of a rocket in the Long March family and comes just 22 months after the 500th launch. By contrast, it took China 37 years to perform the first 100 Long March launches. [SpaceNews]

A Falcon 9 launched more Starlink satellites early this morning. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 5:27 a.m. Eastern and put 28 Starlink satellites into orbit. This was the 130th Falcon 9 launch so far this year, with more than 90 of them devoted to Starlink. [Spaceflight Now]

The U.S. Army plans to make counterspace systems a priority in future budgets. An Army official said at a conference this week that counterspace capabilities will be included in its "strategic priority list" for the first time for its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal. Those capabilities include disrupting an adversary's satellite communications and surveillance capabilities through efforts like jamming. Officials said emphasizing those programs, and calling them counterspace, was important. [DefenseScoop]

France and Germany have agreed to jointly develop a satellite-based missile warning system. The defense ministers of the two countries signed an implementation agreement Wednesday for a program called Odin's Eye, which would use satellites to provide early warnings of missile launches. The program would support missile defense initiatives in Europe. [Reuters]

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Boring Aliens

"It projects a very human-like apathy on to the rest of the cosmos. I find it hard to believe that all intelligent life would be so uniformly dull."

– Michael Garrett, director of the Jodrell Bank radio observatory, responding to a recent paper that argued that efforts to detect signals from extraterrestrial intelligences have failed because such civilizations hit technological plateaus and then give up on space exploration. [The Guardian]

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