Plus: An orbital data center patent
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: SpaceX wins a big Space Force launch contract, a proposed FAA rule would roll back environmental regulations for commercial launches, an orbital data center patent and more.
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Top Stories
The Space Force selected SpaceX for 18 Falcon 9 launches to deploy military satellite constellations. The Space Force announced Wednesday it awarded two task orders valued at $1.6 billion for the launches, scheduled to take place through the end of 2027 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The launches will support the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, which includes the Space Development Agency's Tracking Layer of missile-tracking satellites; the Space Data Network Backbone, an optically linked communications network being built by SpaceX; and the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program, another SpaceX-led constellation intended to track aircraft and other airborne targets from orbit. The launch award is the largest publicly disclosed order under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the contract the Space Force uses for lower-risk national security missions. [SpaceNews]
L3Harris is delaying plans to spin out its missile business despite strong demand. The company said earlier this year it would turn its Missile Solutions business into a separate, publicly traded company in the second half of 2026 after taking a $1 billion investment from the Defense Department. L3Harris CEO Christopher Kubasik told analysts on the company's second-quarter earnings call that demand for the business continues to strengthen, but recent IPO activity has made public markets less attractive. L3Harris now expects to revisit an IPO in mid-2027. [SpaceNews]
A proposed FAA rule would exempt commercial launches from many environmental regulations. The proposal, published Thursday in the Federal Register, would waive requirements from 13 environmental laws and associated regulations for commercial launch, reentry and spaceport licensing. The FAA developed the rule in response to provisions of a commercial space executive order released nearly a year ago that called on the Department of Transportation to reduce environmental and other barriers to launch licensing. The space industry has argued that complying with environmental regulations, including developing environmental assessments, is time-consuming and expensive. Environmental groups oppose the proposal. The publication of the proposed rule starts a 30-day comment period. [SpaceNews]
All Points Logistics won a $250 million contract to expand satellite processing facilities at Vandenberg. The award, announced Wednesday, covers design and construction of a commercially owned and operated spacecraft processing center at Vandenberg's Mission Development Zone. All Points is the third company to receive a contract under a Commercial Solutions Opening, or CSO, initiative to expand satellite processing capacity, after Astrotech and Blue Origin. Payload processing has drawn greater attention as launch activity increases on both U.S. coasts, creating bottlenecks in launch manifests. [SpaceNews]
A company and university have received a patent for orbital data centers. The patent by Sophia Space and Caltech covers the architecture for a modular, scalable, passively cooled, computing and data storage unit designed for assembly into large computing data centers powered by solar energy. It is designed to address one of the key challenges of orbital data centers, how such structures can both take in and radiate away large amounts of power. It builds on earlier work done at Caltech on space-based solar power. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
SpaceX launched a National Reconnaissance Office mission overnight. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 3:10 a.m. Eastern on the NROL-95 mission. The first stage for the launch landed back at Cape Canaveral's Landing Zone 2. Neither SpaceX nor the NRO disclosed any details about the launch's payload, although it is suspected to be a signals intelligence spacecraft. [Orlando Sentinel]
China performed two launches Wednesday. A Long March 7A rocket lifted off from the Wenchang spaceport at 7:50 a.m. Eastern, placing into orbit Tianlan 3-01, a GEO data relay satellite used to support China's space station and other missions. A Long March 6 rocket lifted off at 9 p.m. Eastern from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. It placed into orbit what Chinese media called communication technology test satellites, designated TJS-27A and -27B, but with no further details about their orbit or mission. [Xinhua]
Rocket Lab won another contract from Japanese radar-imaging company iQPS. Rocket Lab announced Thursday it signed a contract to launch three iQPS satellites on Electron rockets starting late this year. This is the third multi-launch contract iQPS has awarded Rocket Lab in the last year, bringing the total number of Electrons ordered to 18. Seven of those launches have taken place, but an eighth launch was scrubbed a month ago after an abort at engine startup. That launch has not yet been rescheduled. [SpaceNews]
French launch startup MaiaSpace has dropped plans for a suborbital test flight. The company had previously planned to make a suborbital flight of its small launch vehicle from French Guiana late this year ahead of its first orbital launch attempt in the first half of 2027. The company now says that ground tests will be sufficient to collect the data it needs and will instead go directly to an orbital launch. That first orbital launch is now planned for the second half of 2027. [European Spaceflight]
The Mexican government is backing down from plans to sue SpaceX over claims about Starship launch debris. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last year that the government was considering suing SpaceX after debris from an explosion during a Starship test landed across the Rio Grande in Mexican territory. Mexican officials had also complained that debris from Starship launches had washed up on Mexican beaches. Sheinbaum said this week that the government was no longer planning a lawsuit after discussions with both SpaceX and the U.S. government. [San Antonio Express-News]
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Space Spotify
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"We're talking about sending about one terabyte of data down to the ground every day. This is like streaming a million songs from a million miles from Earth down to Earth. That's more music than I'll probably listen to in my whole life."
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– Jeremy Perkins, integration and test scientist for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, discussing the amount of data that spacecraft will return during a briefing Wednesday about the mission.
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