By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Space Force seeks to grow, Open Cosmos deploys first satellites of a new constellation, Blue Origin to reuse New Glenn booster on next launch, and more.
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Top Stories
The U.S. Space Force could double in size within the next decade as the Pentagon increasingly treats space as a contested military domain rather than a supporting utility. At an event Wednesday, Gen. Shawn Bratton, vice chief of space operations, said the youngest U.S. military branch is being pressed by the Army, Navy and Air Force to move faster and deliver capabilities that did not previously exist. He said that will require the service, currently with 10,000 uniformed members and 5,000 civilians, to grow significantly. Bratton said the Space Force is working on a long-range planning initiative known as the Objective Force study to understand what capabilities will be required in 2040 and how forces should be structured to sustain operations in a contested space environment. [SpaceNews]
The Space Force's main acquisition arm is working to rebuild its workforce after the departure of hundreds of people last year. Those reductions, driven by voluntary early retirement and deferred resignation programs, hit particularly hard in acquisition and contracting roles just as the Pentagon is pushing the military services to move faster and adopt new procurement approaches. Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Systems Command, said his organization is moving to hire contracting and procurement specialists to fill some of those positions. He called contracting workforce shortages "my greatest challenge" at Space Systems Command. [SpaceNews]
Weather intelligence startup Tomorrow.io announced plans for a satellite constellation to improve forecasting. DeepSky will involve satellites larger than the company's current 6U cubesats that carry microwave sounders. The satellites will carry "instruments of a completely different caliber," a company executive said, but did not disclose details about them. The data from those sensors will feed AI models for weather forecasting, complementing data from existing satellite systems. [SpaceNews]
L3Harris won a contract to provide an instrument for a South Korean weather satellite. The 18-channel L3Harris GEO-KOMPSAT Meteorological Imager will be the primary imager on the Korean Meteorological Administration's (KMA) next-generation geostationary weather satellite under a contract announced Thursday. The instrument is designed to improve the accuracy and timeliness of forecasts for the Korean Peninsula by identifying the spectral signatures of clouds, snow, water moisture and fog. It is similar to instruments L3Harris provides for American and Japanese satellites. [SpaceNews]
A key House appropriator wants to ensure that NASA gets at least as much money in 2027 as in 2026. Speaking at a Capitol Hill event Thursday, Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the commerce, justice and science appropriations subcommittee, said the 2026 spending bill recently passed did a good job overturning proposed steep cuts in NASA programs. She added, though, that there's "room for improvement" for a fiscal year 2027 spending bill, with a goal of ensuring that NASA funding remains stable or grows. She highlighted priorities in the coming year that include plans for landing astronauts on the moon on Artemis 3, as well as more details on NASA's shift from the International Space Station to commercial stations at the end of the decade. [SpaceNews]
Blue Origin will reuse a New Glenn booster for the first time on its next launch. The company announced Thursday plans for the NG-3 launch, scheduled for no earlier than late February. It will use the same first stage as the NG-2 launch in November, where the booster landed on a ship for the first time. The NG-3 launch will carry an AST SpaceMobile satellite. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
The first Blue Origin New Shepard flight of 2026 carried five customers and one employee to the edge of space Thursday. The NS-38 mission lifted off from West Texas at 11:25 a.m. Eastern, going to an altitude of 106 kilometers on the 10-minute flight. The vehicle carried five paying customers as well as a company employee, Laura Stiles, the director of New Shepard launch operations. She replaced a sixth customer originally announced for the flight but who fell ill. [SpaceNews]
Rocket Lab launched the first two satellites for a new constellation by Open Cosmos Thursday. An Electron lifted off from New Zealand at 5:52 a.m. Eastern, deploying the two satellites into a 1,050-kilometer polar orbit a little more than an hour later. The satellites are the first in a telecommunications system intended to provide "sovereign-ready, enterprise-grade space infrastructure." Open Cosmos said testing of the two satellites will directly inform the cadence of subsequent launches and the planned expansion of service capabilities later this year. The company is using spectrum it received from Liechtenstein that was originally assigned to a constellation by Rivada Space Networks. The launch was the first this year by Rocket Lab, which conducted 21 Electron launches in 2025. [SpaceNews]
A new Shenzhou spacecraft has arrived at a Chinese launch site as a damaged one returned. Chinese media reported this week that the Shenzhou-23 spacecraft is now at the Jiuquan spaceport. It provides a capability for an emergency launch to the Tiangong space station in the coming months, before the spacecraft flies the next crew to the station this spring. Its arrival was accelerated after the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft was pressed into service to replace the damaged Shenzhou-20 spacecraft. Shenzhou-20 returned earlier this week, landing safely despite a crack in a window. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX has lined up several major banks to handle its planned IPO. The company is considering Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley for major roles in the initial public offering, which could happen later this year. The IPO will likely raise tens of billions of dollars for SpaceX, valuing the company at $1.5 trillion. [Reuters]
The crew that recently returned from the International Space Station offered few details about the medical issue that prompted their early departure. At a press conference this week, the four members of Crew-11 said medical privacy prevented them from discussing the specific medical issue or the person affected that led NASA to bring them back from the station last week, more than a month ahead of schedule. One astronaut, Mike Fincke, said that a portable ultrasound machine on the station "came in super handy" during the medical incident, but did not discuss specifically how it was used. The four said that the training they received before the flight served them well in the incident and early return. [AP]
Seismometers could help track falling space debris. A study published Thursday examined how the sonic booms generated by a reentering Chinese spacecraft in 2024 hit the ground and created seismic waves detected by seismometers across California. Researchers said that tool could be used to refine the trajectory of falling debris and even provide warnings of potential impacts of such debris. [New York Times]
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FROM SPACENEWS |  | Managing an orbital economy as space grows more congested: In this episode of Space Minds, host David Ariosto talks with Chiara Manfletti, the CEO of Neuraspace and a professor of space mobility and propulsion at the Technical University of Munich. They discuss space debris, orbital logistics and managing a new orbital economy through new initiatives in Europe and around the world. Watch or listen now.
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| Generally Fun
| "It's great, yeah, it's fun being a four-star general. I mean, it really is. Not every day in the Pentagon brings me joy, but it's pretty good, it's pretty cool."
| – Space Force Gen. Shawn Bratton, vice chief of space operations, during an on-stage interview Wednesday hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center and SpaceNews.
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