Plus: A data breach at ESA
| Welcome to our roundup of top SpaceNews stories, delivered every Friday! This week, new access at Vandenberg could open the door to Starship launches, ESA confirms a data breach, China caps a record year for launches and more.
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| | | | | OUR TOP STORY
| | By Jeff Foust Vandenberg Space Force Base is offering launch providers access to a new site with conditions that could enable flights of SpaceX's Starship.
The U.S. Space Force released a request for information, or RFI, on Dec. 29 regarding use of Space Launch Complex 14, a new site near the southern tip of Vandenberg. The site is undeveloped land with no launch infrastructure in place.
The service is seeking expressions of interest from companies proposing to use the site to launch heavy or super-heavy vehicles. The RFI defines heavy-class launch vehicles as those with payload capacities of 20,000 to 50,000 kilograms and super-heavy vehicles as those with capacities greater than 50,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit.
| | | | | | | CIVIL
| | The European Space Agency has confirmed a security breach of unclassified material from science servers following reports on social media. A threat actor claimed to have compromised ESA systems and to have leaked roughly 200 gigabytes of data, but ESA said a "very limited number of science servers" may be affected.
Two NASA heliophysics missions launched together in September are performing well, while a third mission launched earlier this year is beginning limited operations despite problems with one spacecraft.
| | LAUNCH
| | China reached 92 orbital launches in 2025 with back-to-back missions this week, capping a record year for both the country and the global space sector.
China is aiming for a first launch of a reusable, cargo-optimized variant of its new crew launch vehicle in the first half of the year, according to official statements. The new rocket appears to draw on the technologies of the Long March 10A.
| | | | | | | COMMERCIAL
| | Landspace, one of China's leading launch startups, has had its application for an initial public offering accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. Landspace, which recently made China's first-ever attempt at recovering an orbital booster, is seeking to raise around $1 billion (7.5 billion yuan).
Space Forge said Dec. 31 it generated plasma aboard its first satellite, a milestone the British startup says shows it can create and maintain conditions needed to produce valuable semiconductor materials in low Earth orbit.
Planet announced a partnership with Google on what the companies call Project Suncatcher, an effort to demonstrate the ability of AI data centers to operate in orbit. The first phase of the project involves launching two Planet spacecraft equipped with Google's tensor processing units, or TPUs, computer chips optimized for AI applications. | | | | | |  | Latest Press Releases
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