By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Jared Isaacman's fast track to Senate confirmation, MDA selects more than 1,000 agents of SHIELD, Russian cosmonaut removed from next Crew Dragon mission and more.
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Top Stories
Leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee said they hope to confirm Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator this month. At a confirmation hearing Wednesday, committee chair Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said they supported Isaacman's second bid to be NASA administrator and would work to get him confirmed before the end of the month. At the hearing, Isaacman emphasized the urgency of returning NASA astronauts to the moon before China lands its first astronauts there by the end of the decade. He expressed his support for provisions of the budget reconciliation act that funded elements of Artemis such as SLS and Gateway despite efforts by the administration to cancel those programs in its 2026 budget proposal. Isaacman dodged other questions about that budget proposal and continued to state that his relationship with SpaceX founder Elon Musk is solely one as a customer of his earlier private astronaut missions. [SpaceNews]
A Space Force general says that the Pentagon's future in orbit will depend on how effectively it harnesses private-sector innovation. Speaking at the 2025 SpaceNews Icon Awards on Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the U.S. Space Force's top acquisition officer, said the pace of progress outside government is setting the agenda for how the service develops technology for space operations and space warfare. He noted the service is seeking to apply its success in launch procurement, with contracts to several companies, to other mission areas. He also called on Congress to renew the authorization for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program that lapsed in October, which prevents the Space Force and other government agencies from making new awards. [SpaceNews]
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) says picking more than 1,000 companies for a new contracting vehicle is not linked to requirements for the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. MDA announced Tuesday the first awards for its Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) program, a 10-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum value of $151 billion. MDA said it selected 1,014 companies from 2,463 proposals for SHIELD. With SHIELD, MDA is building a bench of prequalified companies to accelerate future buys for homeland-defense modernization. MDA said, though, that the SHIELD awards should not be seen as linked to any requirements for Golden Dome, and that the agency may use other contracts for later Golden Dome efforts. [SpaceNews]
Asset-financing specialist Space Leasing International (SLI) plans to buy two GEO communications satellites from startup AscendArc. The deal, valued at more than $200 million, will be for small GEO satellites planned for launch in late 2028. SLI will lease the spacecraft to satellite operators, betting that those companies will prefer to lease spacecraft rather than buy them, in much the same way that many airlines lease rather than buy their aircraft. SLI believes leasing could help unlock demand from operators struggling to finance space missions up front. [SpaceNews]
Roscosmos has replaced the cosmonaut assigned to the next commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. Roscosmos said this week that Andrey Fedyaev would take the place of Oleg Artemyev on the upcoming Crew-12 mission, set to launch as soon as mid-February. Roscosmos said only that Artemyev, a veteran astronaut who has flown three previous ISS missions, had been transferred to "another job." NASA deferred questions on the reassignment to Roscosmos. Russian media reported that Artemyev had taken images of SpaceX hardware and documentation during Crew Dragon training, which would violate ITAR export control regulations. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
There is a different space race emerging between China and the United States involving satellite servicing. China demonstrated earlier this year the ability to refuel spacecraft in GEO when the Shijian-25 spacecraft docked with and transfered fuel to Shijian-21. While the U.S. military had earlier tested satellite refueling technologies, it had shelved those efforts until recently. U.S. Space Command's push for "dynamic space operations," the ability to maneuver in orbit without worrying about running dry, demands refueling and potentially other capabilities to service spacecraft. A report published last month by the Mitchell Institute argues that logistics will determine whether the U.S. can operate effectively in orbit during a prolonged confrontation. [SpaceNews]
OpenAI founder Sam Altman wants to get into the launch business. Altman reportedly held discussions with Stoke Space, a startup developing a fully reusable rocket, about investing in the company and potentially taking a controlling stake. Those talks have ended, according to a report, and Altman was not mentioned among the investors in Stoke's latest round in October that raised half a billion dollars. Altman's interest in launch is said to be linked to supporting future orbital data centers that could be used by OpenAI. Both SpaceX's Elon Musk and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos have also expressed interest in orbital data centers, as well as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who invested in and became CEO of launch company Relativity Space earlier this year. [Wall Street Journal]
The crew for the next New Shepard suborbital spaceflight includes a former SpaceX executive and a woman with a spinal cord injury. Blue Origin announced Wednesday the six people who will fly on the NS-37 mission in the near future. They include Michaela Benthaus, an engineer who uses a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury sustained in a mountain biking accident. She would be the first person with that condition to go to space. Accompanying her is Hans Koenigsmann, who was one of the first employees at SpaceX and served as a vice president there. [Blue Origin]
The growth of satellite constellations could impact space-based as well as ground-based astronomy. A study this week simulated the effects of proposed megaconstellations on current and planned astronomy spacecraft operating in low Earth orbit. It found that, if projections of as many as half a million spacecraft in low Earth orbit are realized by 2040, up to 40% of Hubble Space Telescope images may contain streaks from passing satellites, a figure that grows to 96% for NASA's SPHEREx mission launched earlier this year. It is unlikely either Hubble or SPHEREx will be operating in 2040, though, and megaconstellations do not affect missions in higher orbits or locations like the Earth-sun L-2 point used by observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope. [Nature]
One Elon Musk project has failed to achieve liftoff: a miniseries. HBO had been working since 2020 on a series dramatizing the early years of SpaceX, based on Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk. However, Vance said Wednesday that HBO is no longer pursuing the series, saying the network "went through too many gyrations for this one to keep the requisite energy" needed to produce the show. Vance said the television rights for the show have reverted to him and he is interested in pursuing other options for producing a show about Musk and SpaceX. [Entertainment Weekly]
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FROM SPACENEWS |  | Ever wanted to pick the brains of the reporters who power SpaceNews? Join us Friday, Dec. 5 at 12 PM ET for your chance to engage with our newsroom team during a subscriber-only live conversation. Chief content and strategy officer Mike Gruss will lead a discussion with reporters Jeff Foust, Sandra Erwin, Jason Rainbow and Debra Werner on their latest coverage and what's on the horizon as we look ahead to 2026. Subscribe now and submit your questions. | | |
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| Bubble Burst
| "Here I was, thinking all the fanfare outside was for industry and analysis, but it's not the first time I've had my bubble burst."
| – Steven Haines, nominee to be assistant secretary of commerce for industry and analysis, at a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday he shared with Jared Isaacman. Dozens of people had lined up outside the hearing room, primarily interested in seeing Isaacman.
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