Plus: Bezos' $30 billion investment in Blue Origin
By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: missile-tracking satellites pass a key review, the Swift reboost mission comes to an end as another satellite servicing mission prepares for launch, Bezos' $30 billion investment in Blue Origin and more.
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Top Stories
Three missile-tracking satellite programs for the Space Force have cleared key design reviews. The Space Development Agency is moving ahead with its Tranche 3 Tracking Layer, a 72-satellite procurement for low Earth orbit worth about $3.5 billion. It completed reviews of separate groups of 18 satellites being built by L3Harris and Rocket Lab. BAE Systems said this week it completed a critical design review for the 10-satellite Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking Medium Earth Orbit Epoch 2 program for Space Systems Command that will operate in MEO. The LEO and MEO programs are part of the Space Force's broader shift toward a multilayered missile-warning and tracking architecture, with different orbital layers providing overlapping coverage and greater resilience than an architecture centered largely on a small number of satellites in geostationary orbit. [SpaceNews]
Even as it pursues a protest of a NASA Mars mission award, Rocket Lab is downplaying the importance of the agency as a customer. Rocket Lab announced earlier this month it filed a protest with the GAO for NASA's selection of Blue Origin for a $700 million Mars communications orbiter, claiming that the award was inconsistent with criteria for the program and that the agency performed a "punitive review" of Rocket Lab's own proposal. At a conference Thursday, Rocket Lab CFO Adam Spice said the company filed the protest because it felt it had not been treated fairly, but did not go into specifics about the protest. He added, though, that while NASA projects can be interesting for the company to pursue, NASA work "really doesn't move the needle financially" for the company compared to its business with national security and commercial customers. [SpaceNews]
A mission that attempted to reboost NASA's Swift astrophysics spacecraft is officially over. Katalyst Space Technologies said its Link spacecraft reentered early Friday, nearly three months after its launch. Link was intended to grapple Swift and raise its orbit, but suffered technical problems that led NASA and the company to rule out a reboost attempt in August. Katalyst Space said it still was able to test other spacecraft systems and will apply that knowledge to future servicing missions. Both NASA and Katalyst Space said they learned a lot about spacecraft technology as well as the ability to move quickly on this mission. Swift itself is expected to reenter sometime in November. [SpaceNews]
Another company is preparing to launch its own satellite servicing mission. Starfish Space said Thursday its first Otter spacecraft will launch on SpaceX's Transporter-18 mission next week. Otter is flying a NASA-funded mission called Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability, or SSPICY, where Otter will approach several objects in low Earth orbit. The mission has the option to attempt to dock with an object, and Starfish said that once the NASA mission is over it could use the spacecraft for other customers. SSPICY is the first in a series of Otter missions that Starfish Space is under contract to develop for both commercial and government customers. [SpaceNews]
HawkEye 360 has signed contracts worth $18 million with multiple customers in the Middle East. Individual customers and contract values were not disclosed for the awards the company announced Thursday. HawkEye 360 operates a constellation of satellites that provide radio-frequency intelligence services. HawkEye 360 sees growing international demand for detecting, geolocating and characterizing radio-frequency emissions worldwide, with about 40% of its business now with international customers. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
China launched a new set of reconnaissance satellites Thursday. A Long March 6 lifted off at 4:46 a.m. Eastern from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center, placing into orbit the Yaogan-40 04 cluster of satellites. The satellites are thought to be used for signals intelligence. [Xinhua]
SpaceX is a step closer to the first orbital Starship launch. The company performed a wet dress rehearsal of the Starship/Super Heavy vehicle on the pad at Starbase, Texas, on Thursday, one of the last before the scheduled launch of the Flight 14 mission on Monday. This will be the first orbital flight of Starship, with the upper stage remaining in orbit for six orbits, or about 10 hours, deploying 26 next-generation Starlink satellites before splashing down in the Pacific off the coast of Chile. [Space.com]
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has invested $30 billion of his own money into the company. Financial documents revealed that investment, made since he established the company in 2000. Bezos has been the sole investor in Blue Origin but the company is now working on its first outside funding round that reportedly seeks to raise at least $10 billion at a valuation of $140 billion. Bezos is providing $2 billion in that round. [Wall Street Journal]
Google is set to test orbital data center technology in space on a spacecraft launching next week. Google is partnering with Planet on a spacecraft that will fly on the Transporter-18 rideshare mission. That spacecraft will test how specialized computing systems can operate in the space environment. Google announced last year it was working with Planet on Project Suncatcher, a technology development effort that could lead Google to pursue orbital data centers. [New York Times]
As NASA prepares to launch a new crew to the International Space Station, it has named the crew that will follow them next year. The Crew-14 mission, scheduled to launch in spring 2027 on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, will be commanded by NASA astronaut Kayla Barron with NASA's Chris Birch as pilot. JAXA astronaut Makoto Suwa and Roscosmos cosmonaut Arutyun Kiviryan will be mission specialists. It will be the first space flights for all but Barron, who flew on the Crew-3 mission in 2021. The announcement came a week before the launch of the Crew-13 mission to the station. [NASA]
For the third time this week, a country has signed the Artemis Accords. The African nation of Côte d'Ivoire signed the accords Thursday in a ceremony in the capital city of Abidjan. The country's minister of higher education and science signed the accords as part of the Africa Space Expo ASPEX 2026 conference. Côte d'Ivoire is the 75th country to sign the Artemis Accords since 2020 and third to do so this week, after Albania on Monday and Croatia on Wednesday. [NASA]
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Over Engineers
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"Anything that is engineered by an engineer is going to be over-engineered to some degree."
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– Madison Dye, vice president of business development for C5ISR at Lyntris, during a panel discussion at the Off World conference on Thursday.
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