Plus: A trio of paused launches
| By Dan Robitzski
One million more satellites in low Earth orbit. That's SpaceX's latest ask of the federal government, according to a Jan. 30 Federal Communications Commission filing describing the company's next planned constellation.
To put that figure into context, the FCC has authorized SpaceX to operate a total of 15,000 Gen2 Starlink satellites as of a Jan. 9 approval for a batch of 7,500. SpaceX has proposed deploying just shy of 30,000 Starlink satellites in total. Quick math shows that SpaceX wants to launch a constellation that could be more than 33 times bigger than the largest possible version of Starlink, already breaking records for proliferation (and, depending who you ask, congestion) in LEO. China plans to launch nearly 200,000 satellites for its LEO Guowang (Thousand Sails) megaconstellation. If megaconstellations are being outnumbered by an order of magnitude, maybe the space industry already needs a bigger word for what's at play.
Why the giant numbers? According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the satellites will operate as orbital data centers that will use their near-constant access to sunlight to power onboard AI, something Musk and the broader tech industry insist must continue to grow to the point that terrestrial power systems cannot provide for them.
To further this vision, SpaceX has now acquired xAI, the artificial intelligence company also run by Elon Musk that operates the social media platform X and develops its on-platform AI systems. This combines SpaceX, a space company with such a propensity for landing federal contracts that it's all but considered critical national infrastructure, with xAI and its generative AI.
For now, details on the plans and logistics of the new mega-megaconstellation are scarce — Musk's emphasis on orbital data centers is a comparatively recent development — though it seems SpaceX plans to rely heavily on Starship launches to deploy huge batches of satellites at once.
| | | | | | | SIGNIFICANT DIGIT
| $658M | | The expected value of Eutelsat's planned sale of its passive ground infrastructure to a private equity firm, announced in August 2024, which fell through Jan. 29.
| | | | | | | A MOMENT OF PAUSE
| | Not too long ago, each space launch was a newsworthy event; a triumph of human ingenuity as a machine successfully crosses the boundary of Earth's atmosphere and reaches orbit. Today, with hundreds of annual orbital launches setting a steady drumbeat, it can be more interesting — or at least more surprising — when that cadence comes to even a temporary halt. And this past week, we've seen a one-two-three punch of NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin pausing missions:
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NASA's Artemis 2 mission has slipped from a potential February launch to no earlier than March, due to hydrogen leaks detected during a fueling test of the Space Launch system. -
SpaceX has paused Falcon 9 launches following a vaguely described upper stage anomaly during a Feb. 2 launch. -
Blue Origin has halted all flights of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for "not less than" two years to focus on lunar missions. | | | | | | | FROM SPACENEWS |  | | Lower costs and increase access with a group subscription: Get unlimited access to SpaceNews reporting and analysis for your whole team so they can stay up to speed on developments across the industry. With volume discounts, simplified billing and easy user management, setting up your entire organization to follow SpaceNews' journalism is the easiest decision you can make to guarantee that everyone has the intelligence they need for your mission to succeed. Set up access now for as few as two users. | | | | | | | | | Amazon has purchased an additional 10 Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX as part of its efforts to accelerate deployment of its broadband satellite constellation.
| | | | Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a visit to Blue Origin's Florida rocket factory to say that the Pentagon intends to favor faster, commercially driven innovation — and hold traditional defense contractors to account for what officials say has been years of missed schedules and misaligned incentives.
| | | | | The NASA Reauthorization Act of 2026, H.R. 7273, would require closer scrutiny of lunar lander and spacesuit development for the Artemis program
| | | | The European Union's new government satellite communications program, GOVSATCOM, which pools capacity from eight already on-orbit geosynchronous satellites, began operations last week.
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