05/05/2026

In our May issue: Artemis 2 returned. The next missions are underway. What comes next as the United States races back to the moon? Read the magazine.

By Jeff Foust

In this today's edition: Anduril announces its space interceptor industry team, DARPA wants to revamp its approach to space programs, Jim Bridenstine named CEO of Quantum Space and more.

If someone forwarded you this edition, sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday. Have thoughts or feedback? You can hit reply to let me know.

Top Stories

Anduril Industries is partnering with a group of commercial space companies and a research lab on Golden Dome interceptors. Anduril said Tuesday it is working with Impulse Space, Inversion Space, K2 Space, Sandia National Laboratories and Voyager Technologies. Anduril is one of 12 companies selected by the Space Force to build space-based interceptors, a core element of the Pentagon's planned layered missile defense architecture. [SpaceNews]

The National Reconnaissance Office is adding three companies to a program to acquire commercial satellite imagery. The NRO said Monday that EarthDaily Analytics, Iceye and Pixxel have been selected under its Commercial Solutions Opening program, a contracting approach designed to evaluate emerging commercial technologies with fewer upfront requirements. Pixxel will provide hyperspectral imagery and EarthDaily will provide optical and multispectral imagery. Iceye, which has been selling synthetic aperture radar imagery to the NRO since 2022, received a new award focused on non-traditional radio-frequency sensing using its radar satellites. [SpaceNews]

One of those companies, Pixxel, is also planning to test orbital data center technologies. The company said Monday it is collaborating with Indian AI technology firm Sarvam to provide onboard language models and an inference software platform on a pathfinder satellite that will be ready for launch before the end of the year. The technology would be used to analyze imagery collected by the satellite, but could also be a step toward satellites devoted to orbital data center applications. [SpaceNews]

The head of DARPA wants to reshape the agency's space portfolio. Speaking at the GEOINT Symposium, Stephen Winchell said DARPA's space programs must function less as a collection of high-risk experiments and more as a conduit to a fast-moving commercial market. DARPA is focusing on foundational building blocks such as propulsion, maneuverability and the ability to assemble and sustain large structures in orbit, alongside analytical tools to plan and manage increasingly complex space operations. DARPA is considering a new "Grand Challenge" focused on cislunar navigation, a technical problem centered on how spacecraft determine their position and trajectory in the region between Earth and the moon, where GPS-like infrastructure is unavailable. [SpaceNews]

A NATO official says the alliance must update policies and strengthen relationships among allies to accelerate the fusion of commercial and national geospatial intelligence. Maj. Gen. Paul Lynch, NATO deputy assistant secretary general for intelligence, said at the GEOINT Symposium Monday that the war in Ukraine has shown the benefits of combining intelligence from its member states along with commercial imagery, but also the challenges of integrating that data. NATO needs standards that enable commercial, national and NATO-partner data processed by AI to contribute to the same operational picture, he said, and be able to do that work quickly. [SpaceNews]

Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is the new CEO of Quantum Space. The company announced Tuesday it hired Bridenstine to lead the firm as it seeks national security space work. Quantum Space is developing Ranger, a highly maneuverable spacecraft, and recently won a contract from DARPA to study a lunar orbiter. It is also part of the Space Force's Andromeda program for monitoring activities in geosynchronous orbit. Bridenstine said the planned capabilities of Ranger, slated to fly its first mission next year, and the growing importance of highly maneuverable space activities attracted him to the job. [SpaceNews]

Ireland and Malta are the latest countries to sign the Artemis Accords. Malta signed the Accords at an event in Malta Monday, followed later in the day by Ireland in a ceremony at NASA Headquarters. With the signings, all of ESA's full and associate members have joined the Accords, along with all but one EU nation. Sixty-six countries have signed the Accords, outlining best practices in space exploration, including five in just over two weeks. [SpaceNews]

Other News

Firefly Aerospace expects to perform the first launch of its upgraded Alpha rocket later this summer. In an earnings call Monday, Firefly executives said the first Alpha Block 2 launch is projected for late summer, with two more Alpha launches before the end of the year. The Block 2 features upgrades intended to improve the reliability of the rocket. Firefly sees strong demand for Alpha, particularly in national security space. The company also said it expects it is well-positioned to capture demand from NASA's revised Artemis plans, noting it had already expanded cleanroom space to support production of additional lunar landers. [SpaceNews]

Interlune received a NASA contract to develop a payload for extracting helium-3 from lunar regolith. The company said Monday it won a $6.9 million contract from NASA's space technology directorate that will test how heating and mechanical processing can liberate helium-3 embedded in lunar regolith. Interlune has long-term ambitions to mine helium-3 from the moon, returning it to Earth for applications such as quantum computing. The payload is planned to launch in 2028 on a lander yet to be selected by the company. [SpaceNews]

Several companies are working together on how to access and use commercial satellite imagery and other geospatial intelligence when communications networks are unreliable or unavailable. The initiative, called Coalition Edge, brings together companies focused on analytics, cloud infrastructure and connectivity to process and deliver intelligence directly in the field. Coalition Edge is built around what participants describe as an "edge intelligence stack," a combination of computing hardware, software and networking tools designed to process data closer to where it is collected. The group has been demonstrating the technology on the show floor at the GEOINT Symposium. [SpaceNews]

South Korea's Hancom InSpace is expanding its Earth observation constellation. The company says its Sejong-3 cubesat, launched on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission in March, is undergoing commissioning. Sejong-3 has a hyperspectral imager, complementing multispectral imagers on Sejong-2 and -4, launched last year. [SpaceNews]

AI tools risk undermining trust in satellite imagery. In the recent conflict in the Middle East, some organizations have altered satellite images or created false images using AI tools claiming to show evidence of attacks. Experts say growing AI capabilities will only make it easier to manipulate or generate false satellite images, but also noted that the wealth of available satellite imagery makes it easier than ever to debunk false claims. [SpaceNews]

Astronomers have detected a tenuous atmosphere on a small icy body in the outer solar system. Observations of the Kuiper Belt object 2002 XV93 in 2024 as it passed in front of a star revealed the presence of an atmosphere whose pressure is just 100 to 200 billionths that of Earth's atmosphere. The discovery is surprising since the object is only about 500 kilometers across and as far from the sun as Pluto. The observations could not determine the atmosphere's composition, although it is likely some combination of carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen. It's also unclear how the atmosphere formed. [New Scientist]

Important Tasks

"On stage with Administrator Isaacman, Minister Burke and Ambassador Nason, I am very aware that my principal diplomatic task is to know where to sit and when to stop talking."

– William Cappelletti, chief of staff in the Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the State Department, during a ceremony Monday where Ireland signed the Artemis Accords.

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