Plus: NASA outlines nuclear propulsion plans
| By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: the Space Force scrambles to deal with Vulcan launch delays, Telesat looks to win U.S. military customers for Lightspeed, NASA outlines its nuclear propulsion plans and more.
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| | | | | | Top Stories
The Space Force says it will have to revise plans for upcoming missions because of the grounding of ULA's Vulcan Centaur. The rocket has not flown since a launch in early February that suffered an anomaly with one of its solid rocket boosters, although the payload was able to reach its planned orbit. The chair of the House Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee said at a hearing Wednesday he expected the rocket to be grounded for at least six months. Space Force officials said at the hearing they are considering options of moving payloads to other vehicles or extending the lives of satellites on orbit because of delays in the launch of their replacements. [SpaceNews]
The Office of Space Commerce has released its proposal for oversight of novel space activities. The mission authorization proposal, announced Wednesday by Taylor Jordan, director of the office, would create a voluntary system for "Space Commerce Certification" by his office of missions not currently regulated by existing processes. That "light touch" approach includes basic due diligence of the proposed mission by the office and an interagency review, with the office issuing a certification within 120 days unless it finds reason to deny the application. The concept would address a gap in oversight of commercial missions that is required by the Outer Space Treaty. The proposal received a positive reaction from industry. [SpaceNews]
Sift, a startup developing tools to help engineers make sense of hardware sensor data, raised $42 million. The company announced the Series B round Wednesday led by StepStone Group. With the funding, Sift plans to expand its staff of engineers building the infrastructure layer that underpins devices controlled by artificial intelligence algorithms. The company was founded four years ago by two former SpaceX engineers. [SpaceNews]
Swiss startup Pave Space has raised $40 million to develop an orbital transfer vehicle. The company announced the seed round Wednesday led by Visionaries Club and Creandum with participation from several other investors. The company is developing a roughly 20-metric-ton vehicle that would be able to deliver up to five metric tons of payload from LEO to medium and geostationary Earth orbit, or lunar trajectories, in less than a day. Pave plans to fly a pathfinder called Graze in October to validate in-house avionics as it performs ground tests of the vehicle's propulsion system. A first flight of the transfer vehicle is scheduled for 2029. [SpaceNews]
Airbase has emerged from stealth with plans to improve coordination of satellite and other radio-frequency spectrum. The startup said Wednesday it raised $5 million to modernize how governments coordinate radio frequencies used by satellites, 5G networks and other wireless systems by automating decades-old coordination systems with software-driven tools. The software is designed to reduce the burden of manual interference analysis and legacy database management. Its efforts come as the FCC is set today to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking to free up spectrum for novel space activities or, in the FCC's words, "weird space stuff." [SpaceNews]
Telesat is sharpening its pitch to U.S. defense customers for its Lightspeed constellation. The Canadian satellite operator is positioning Lightspeed as a high-capacity data transport layer for defense networks, capable of moving large volumes of information with low latency while reducing exposure to jamming or interception. The company has added military Ka-band spectrum to its system and also plans to conduct a test of optical intersatellite links under a NASA contract. Telesat is seeking to align Lightspeed with U.S military requirements, arguing that commercial networks can supplement government systems and help close near-term gaps in capacity. [SpaceNews]
| | | | | | Other News
China launched a pair of imaging satellites Wednesday. A Long March 2D lifted off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center at 6:51 p.m. Eastern and placed into orbit the Siwei Gaojing-2 05 and 06 satellites. The spacecraft, also known as Superview Neo, provide high-resolution imaging for the China Siwei Survey and Mapping Technology, a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. [Xinhua]
Isar Aerospace scrubbed a launch of its Spectrum rocket from Norway Wednesday. The company called off the launch from the Andรธya Spaceport after a boat went into restricted waters offshore. The company has not disclosed a new launch attempt for the mission, the second flight of the Spectrum rocket. [NASASpaceFlight.com]
NASA plans to demonstrate nuclear electric propulsion on a mission to Mars launching in late 2028. The agency announced this week the Space Reactor 1 (SR-1) Freedom mission as part of its overhaul of Artemis on Tuesday. SR-1 Freedom will have a 20-kilowatt reactor producing power for a electric propulsion adapted from the Power and Propulsion Element built for the canceled lunar Gateway. SR-1 Freedom will take a year to go to Mars, and upon arrival deploy SkyFall, a set of three small helicopters modeled on the Ingenuity helicopter that will scout a potential human landing site. [SpaceNews]
The filing of SpaceX's initial public offering (IPO) prospectus may be imminent. Sources familiar with SpaceX's plans said the company may formally file for its IPO as soon as the end of this week. SpaceX is expected to further scale up the IPO, seeking to raise $75 billion rather than the $50 billion previously reported. Those plans helped boost shares in other space companies in trading Wednesday as investors look for other opportunities in the space sector. [Bloomberg]
Two countries outside of the European Union are joining the EU's IRIS² constellation. Iceland and Norway signed agreements Thursday to participate in the secure broadband constellation and are the first countries outside the EU to join the system. Norway will provide 40 million euros ($46 million) and Iceland 3 million euros for IRIS² in 2026-2027, with future funding to be negotiated later. [Euractiv]
A leading climate scientist has resigned from NASA. Kate Marvel, who studied climate at the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences (GISS), said Tuesday she was resigning out of concerns that science had come under attack at the agency. In an interview, she said there was no single incident that led her to resign but instead the "accumulation of thing after thing," from NASA terminating the lease for GISS's New York office to a lack of research funding. [Scientific American]
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| "There's a lack of restaurants available in Wallops in the off-season. You can only eat at so many places after certain hours."
| | – Adam Oakes, vice president of launch at Firefly Aerospace, discussing spaceport infrastructure needs during a Satellite 2026 panel Wednesday.
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