By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: Starship ready to launch next-gen Starlink satellites, Telesat wins its biggest contract ever, Europe falls behind in the orbital data center race and more.
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Top Stories
SpaceX plans to begin deploying payloads in orbit on its next Starship flight. The company announced during its earnings call Tuesday that Flight 14, the next Starship mission, will deploy Starlink V3 satellites into operational orbits. All Starship test flights to date have been suborbital missions, including Flight 13 last month that deployed Starlink V3 satellites for brief in-space tests before the satellites reentered. Flight 14 is tentatively scheduled for the end of this month. SpaceX also intends to recover the Starship upper stage on that flight back at the launch site with a tower catch, pending regulatory approval. In the earnings call, the first since the company went public in June, SpaceX reported a net loss of $541 million on revenue of $7.8 billion in the second quarter. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made bold predictions about the company's growth in the call, including that it would reach $1 trillion in annual revenue in 2030, but SpaceX shares fell in after-hours trading because of concerns about current AI spending. [SpaceNews]
Canadian satellite operator Telesat has signed the largest contract in its history. Telesat announced Tuesday a $1.63 billion contract with Canada's Defence Investment Agency for military Ka-band services in the Arctic beginning in 2028. The deal includes two five-year options valued at about $142 million each. Those services would be provided by Telesat's upcoming Lightspeed low Earth orbit constellation. The contract gives Telesat an anchor defense customer before Lightspeed begins service. It also supplies funding to increase the number of fully financed satellites in the low Earth orbit constellation from 156 to 225. Telesat already had a contract with MDA Space for 198 satellites, and added 27 satellites to the contract with this agreement. [SpaceNews]
Rocket Lab is among three companies to win Space Force contracts to develop technologies for a satellite network intended to track aircraft and missile threats from orbit. The Space Force announced Tuesday $615 million in contracts to Rocket Lab, Systems & Technology Research and an undisclosed third company for the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator, or SB-AMTI, program. It will provide the military with persistent tracking from space over areas where surveillance aircraft may be unable to operate safely. The Space Force did not say how the funding would be allocated among the three companies but Rocket Lab said its share is worth $397 million, funding production and launch of "Flatellites" for the constellation. The new contracts follow a $4.16 billion award to SpaceX to build the initial AMTI satellite constellation. [SpaceNews]
Space traffic management startup Neuraspace raised an additional $18 million. The Portuguese company announced the new funding Wednesday, consisting of €6 million ($6.9 million) in Series B venture funding and €9.6 million from Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan. The funding will support the company's work on NeuraspaceDEF, an AI-powered space domain awareness platform for civil and defense users. The platform combines data from public databases, ground-based telescopes and its own optical sensors to improve satellite tracking. It monitors more than 600 satellites for customers such as Spire Global and the European Space Agency. [SpaceNews]
Voyager Technologies would like to see NASA reduce some of the proposed requirements for the next phase of a commercial space station program. In an earnings call Tuesday, Voyager executives were upbeat about the prospects for Starlab, the commercial space station being developed by the Starlab Space joint venture where Voyager is the majority owner. That includes competing for the next phase of NASA's Commercial LEO Destinations program, for which NASA released a draft RFP last month. Voyager said it was concerned that the requirements NASA imposed on companies in the draft RFP were too robust, and urged NASA to relax them. Voyager expects the final RFP to be released "shortly" with NASA making awards by early next year. [SpaceNews]
SpaceX's Starfall reentry vehicle is a validation of the market for companies developing their own vehicles as well as a stiff competitor. SpaceX flew its first Starfall test flight in June, demonstrating a vehicle that can return about one ton from orbit. Starfall comes as many startups in the United States, Europe and Asia pursue their own vehicles, seeking to tap into demand for pharmaceutical research and space manufacturing. Those companies said that SpaceX's entry into the field with Starfall demonstrates the strong potential of the market, but acknowledged they will have to work to differentiate themselves. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
SpaceX launched Starlink and BlueBird satellites on separate missions less than 24 hours apart. One Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 1:05 p.m. Eastern Tuesday, putting 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, adding to a constellation of now about 10,800 satellites. Another Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 3:49 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, carrying three BlueBird direct-to-device satellites for AST SpaceMobile. That company, a competitor to SpaceX, has been forced to rely on SpaceX for launches with Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket out of service. [Spaceflight Now]
China launched another set of broadband satellites Tuesday. A Long March 8A lifted off at 4:52 a.m. Eastern from the Wenchang commercial launch site. It placed into orbit a set of satellites for the Guowang constellation. Separately, a Jielong-3 (Smart Dragon-3) lifted off at 10:38 p.m. Eastern Tuesday from a ship offshore from Haiyang, China. The rocket placed into orbit two hyperspectral imaging satellites. [Xinhua]
A new study warns Europe risks falling behind China and the United States in the race to develop orbital data centers. The study released Wednesday by the European Space Policy Institute noted that Chinese companies have already deployed satellites to serve as orbital data centers following a top-down approach with government backing, while American companies are pursuing more commercially driven approaches. Europe, though, continues to focus on research and small-scale technology demonstrations, and the study recommended the European Union identify orbital data centers as an emerging pillar of technological sovereignty and coordinate policy, investment and regulation around their development. [SpaceNews]
NOAA extended a contract with Spire to acquire commercial microwave sounding data. The six-month extension, announced Tuesday, is worth $3 million. The extension will allow NOAA to continue evaluations of hyperspectral microwave sounding data to see how it can improve weather forecasting. Spire's Hyperspectral Microwave Sounder, launched in January, offers improved vertical resolution compared to passive microwave sensors. [SpaceNews]
Rubicon Space Systems has completed testing of a spacecraft thruster that uses a nontoxic alternative to hydrazine. The company said tests showed its Velox thruster, which produces five newtons of thrust, exceeded design objectives in tests and is ready to go into production. Velox uses ASCENT, a green propellant developed as an alternative to hydrazine. Rubicon has three customers so far for Velox, with deliveries to the first customer scheduled for early 2027. [SpaceNews]
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Especially after the Trade Deadline
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"If you apply a small amount of the engineering skill that goes into making gigantic rockets reach orbit on a regular basis reliably to terrestrial data centers, this is like, frankly, the Yankees, New York Yankees, going in and playing a little league team, and it's kind of ridiculous, frankly."
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– Elon Musk, contrasting the construction of terrestrial data centers with the much more difficult task of building reusable rockets during SpaceX's earnings call Tuesday.
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