Plus: Capella wins an SDA contract
By Jeff Foust
In this today's edition: Northrop Grumman to build a Hungarian communications satellite, a new report warns of growing space security risks, Capella Space wins SDA award and more.
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Top Stories
A new report says space security is shifting from a niche arms-control concern to a central policy issue as reliance on satellites deepens and the tools to disrupt them proliferate. The annual Global Counterspace Capabilities report by the Secure World Foundation, released Wednesday, finds that interference with space systems now carries immediate military, economic and political consequences, while the capabilities to cause that interference grow. While past discussions on counterspace technologies focused largely on the United States, China and Russia, this report says more countries are developing such technologies. [SpaceNews]
Scientists are digging into the data returned by Artemis 2's lunar flyby as the Orion spacecraft makes its way back to Earth. At a briefing Tuesday, NASA officials said the Artemis 2 astronauts took more than 175 gigabytes of images during Monday's flyby, of which about 50 gigabytes have been returned so far. NASA has used an optical communications experiment to return much of the imagery at much higher rates than traditional radio-frequency systems. The Orion spacecraft continues to work well, with the spacecraft set to splash down late Friday near San Diego. [SpaceNews]
Northrop Grumman won a contract to build Hungary's first national communications satellite. As part of Vice President JD Vance's visit to Budapest Tuesday, the Hungarian defense and space firm 4iG announced an agreement with Northrop to build a geostationary communications satellite under a program known as HUSAT. The spacecraft, a Ka-band system based on Northrop's GEOStar-3 platform, is scheduled for delivery in 2030 and would provide Hungary with its first domestically controlled satellite communications capability. The HUSAT program combines the geostationary satellite with a planned constellation of eight Earth observation spacecraft that 4iG will develop. Separately, 4iG signed an agreement with Apex to explore establishing a joint venture aimed at building small satellites in Europe and targeting demand for large constellations. [SpaceNews]
Capella Space won a $49 million contract from the Space Development Agency (SDA) for testing military satellite communications. The firm-fixed-price agreement was issued Tuesday under SDA's Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit, or HALO, an other transaction authority contracting mechanism used to fund rapid, on-orbit experiments. Capella, a California-based operator of a commercial radar imaging constellation and a subsidiary of IonQ, will design and develop two spacecraft equipped with specialized radio frequency payloads to test what SDA called "advanced tactical waveform performance, adaptive beamforming, and secure tactical communications" in LEO. The effort is aimed at showing that satellites in low Earth orbit can support military-grade communications links that remain reliable under interference or jamming. [SpaceNews]
Astroscale has completed the critical design review for two cubesats for the British military. The U.K. subsidiary of the Japanese on-orbit servicing venture announced the milestone Wednesday for the Orpheus mission, which was fully funded last year under a 5.15 million British pound ($7 million) contract from the U.K.'s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. The mission involves flying a pair of near-identical spacecraft from British small satellite specialist Open Cosmos in close formation for a year in LEO. The spacecraft carry hyperspectral imagers for detecting and characterizing objects of interest. The cubesats will also study space weather. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
A Minotaur 4 launched a mission for the Defense Department's Space Test Program Tuesday. The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 7:33 a.m. Eastern on the STP-S29A mission. The primary payload was STPSat-7, carrying several Space Test Program experiments. Also on board were a pair of U.S. Army cubesats called Rawhide and several other cubesats. [Edhat]
China launched a set of broadband constellation satellites Tuesday. A Long March 8 lifted off at 9:32 a.m. Eastern from the Wenchang spaceport on the island of Hainan, placing 18 Qianfan satellites into orbit. The Qianfan, or Thousand Sails, satellites are part of a planned broadband constellation ultimately numbering 14,000 satellites. [Xinhua]
LeoLabs is expanding beyond tracking satellites and debris into identifying potential threats in orbit. The company announced Wednesday its new Delta system, a software platform designed to detect and characterize unusual satellite behavior. The tool is aimed at military and government operators managing spacecraft in low Earth orbit, where congestion and geopolitical competition are both increasing. Delta is designed to flag behavior such as when a satellite changes its orbit in ways that put it into the same orbital plane as another spacecraft, allowing for repeated approaches. Several allied governments in Europe and Asia are already using Delta. [SpaceNews]
Two European companies are teaming up to develop an inspection cubesat. Bulgarian satellite maker EnduroSat and British defense tech startup Shield Space announced Wednesday plans to deploy a cubesat next year capable of maneuvering near other satellites for inspection. The partnership combines EnduroSat's standardized satellite platform architecture with Shield Space's autonomous rendezvous and proximity operations software, originally developed for drones used in Ukraine. The first mission under the partnership is slated for the second quarter of 2027 and is dubbed Broadsword, involving an 8U autonomous "chaser" cubesat that would conduct RPO operations with a smaller 3U target satellite launched alongside it. Broadsword is intended as a stepping stone toward a broader architecture centered on a mothership capable of deploying multiple maneuverable spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
The Italian government is seeking to replace the CEO of space and defense company Leonardo. The government, which owns more than 30% of Leonardo, wants to replace Roberto Cingolani, but has not offered details about why. Leonardo's shares have soared since 2022 and as recently as February Cingolani appeared to be on track to secure a new three-year term as CEO. A potential replacement is Lorenzo Mariani, a former Leonardo executive who is now is now at European missile manufacturer MBDA. Leonardo is in the process of merging its space business with those from Airbus and Thales through a joint venture named Project Bromo. [Reuters]
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FROM SPACENEWS BRAND STUDIO |
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The debate the space industry didn't know it needed: Forget delta-v. Forget mass fraction. Forget everything you know about actual spacecraft for one glorious evening. Redwire is crowning the greatest sci-fi spaceship of all time this year at Space Symposium — and YOUR vote decides the battlefield. Vote now. |
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Never Boring
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"I've spent most of my morning just flipping through the thousands of images that have started to come down, and there is something in every image that surprises me, right? I mean, you might think that, after looking at hundreds of images taken of the lunar surface, I would get sick of it. I have not, nor do I anticipate getting sick of it."
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– Kelsey Young, leader of the Artemis 2 science team, discussing the images returned from the Artemis 2 mission at a briefing Tuesday.
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