By Jeff Foust
In today's edition: three companies raise more than $1.5 billion, Isar Aerospace reaches orbit on its second Spectrum launch, the Space Force restarts work on a new GPS ground system and more.
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Top Stories
Stoke Space Technologies has raised $1 billion that will help the company develop a larger reusable launch vehicle. The company announced Tuesday the initial close of a Series E round led by Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital with participation from several other investors. Stoke Space has raised $2.3 billion to date, with more than $1.8 billion of that coming in the last year. The company said it will use the funding to accelerate work on Nova Block 2, an upgraded version of its original Nova vehicle now called Nova Pathfinder. Nova Block 2 will be able to place up to 15 tons into orbit with reusable lower and upper stages, with a first launch planned for 2029. The first Nova Pathfinder launch is scheduled for early 2027. [SpaceNews]
The Exploration Company (TEC) has raised $450 million to complete a cargo spacecraft and advance planning for its own launch vehicle. The company said Tuesday it closed a Series C round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico and the Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT. It is the largest Series C for a European space company, and brings the total raised by TEC to $680 million. The company will use the funding to complete work on its Nyx cargo spacecraft, with a first flight to the International Space Station planned for 2028. The funds will also support development of Storm, a large rocket engine intended for use on a future reusable European launcher. The funding round came a day before the start of the International Space Summit in Paris, an event that is expected to include contract announcements by French and European companies. [SpaceNews]
Indian hyperspectral imaging startup Pixxel announced a $100 million funding round Sunday. The company said the funding round will allow it to ramp up satellite production in both India and the United States. A Gigapixxel factory is set to open in the coming months in India that will allow the company to expand production from 25 to 100 satellites annually. Pixxel also aims to expand annual production capacity in Los Angeles, including the upgraded Honeybee imaging platform slated to debut early next year. The company launched its first six Firefly hyperspectral imaging satellites last year with another six planned for next year before shifting to Honeybee, which will extend coverage into shortwave infrared wavelengths across around 250 spectral bands. [SpaceNews]
Isar Aerospace successfully launched its Spectrum rocket for the first time Saturday. Spectrum lifted off from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway at 4:12 p.m. Eastern and reached orbit, deploying five cubesats. Those cubesats, along with one hosted payload, were from European companies and universities supported by the European Space Agency's Boost! program. This was the second launch of Spectrum after the first flight of the small launch vehicle failed shortly after liftoff in March 2025. This launch was originally scheduled for January but delayed several times by technical and range issues. Isar said after the launch that the next Spectrum rocket is in production, but did not announce a launch date or identify the payload. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Space Force is starting work on a new ground control architecture for its future GPS constellation after the cancellation of the OCX program. Space Systems Command is preparing a prototype competition for GPS Gen4 Ground, the command-and-control segment of a broader next-generation GPS architecture now being defined by the service, according to a "coming soon" notice posted last week. The envisioned architecture would include a software application framework that could run on government hardware, cloud services or a combination of the two. The Pentagon canceled the OCX program in April after concluding that the remaining problems could not be resolved quickly enough without creating unacceptable risk for GPS operations. OCX had cost approximately $6.27 billion. [SpaceNews]
A Chinese satellite launched into an unusual orbit early this year has suffered an apparent fragmentation event. The U.S. Space Force has cataloged 43 debris objects from the breakup of Yaogan-50 (02), a spacecraft launched in March on a Long March 6A rocket into a retrograde orbit at an inclination of 142 degrees. The cause of the breakup was not immediately clear, nor was it clear whether the debris count is likely to grow. The low velocity of the debris suggests it was not caused by a collision or energetic event, but could instead be from shedding insulation of a smaller battery incident. The debris fragments are at altitudes of 600 to 1,100 kilometers, meaning they will remain in orbit for many years. The satellite is likely used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. [SpaceNews]
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Other News
SpaceX launched more Starlink satellites on Sunday. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 10:26 a.m. Eastern and placed 27 Starlink satellites into orbit. The launch was the 80th Starlink mission this year. [Spaceflight Now]
Katalyst Space is wrapping up operations of a spacecraft intended to reboost a NASA space telescope. The company said Friday that its Link spacecraft came within 12 to 15 kilometers of NASA's Swift gamma-ray observatory during recent operations that also tested the spacecraft's thrusters and robotic arms. Katalyst Space launched Link in July to grapple Swift and raise its orbit, but attitude-control issues with Link caused the company, in collaboration with NASA, to cancel the reboost effort last month. Katalyst Space plans to continue to operate Link for two to three more weeks before the spacecraft deorbits. Swift's orbit continues to decay, and NASA said it expects to get one or two more months of science operations from Swift before its atmospheric drag makes it too difficult to operate the spacecraft. [SpaceNews]
The U.S. Space Force is putting $50 million behind a startup developing an unusual way to dispatch small spacecraft from a larger vehicle in orbit. California-based Space Kinetic is developing Whirlwind, an electromechanical system designed to release small spacecraft from a host vehicle at high velocity. The company recently announced that it received a $50 million Other Transaction Authority agreement from the Space Force to develop the technology. The company is not building a maneuverable satellite bus or space tug but is focusing on the machinery needed to release smaller payloads from a host platform, which could potentially allow the deployed vehicles to be simpler and cheaper. [SpaceNews]
Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) provided the optical telescope used in a Space Force "cat-and-mouse" exercise involving two spacecraft. LLNL developed the telescope incorporated into a Rocket Lab spacecraft for the Victus Haze mission, where Rocket Lab's Puma and True Anomaly's Jackal spacecraft pursued each other in low Earth orbit. LLNL says its payload helped Puma acquire and track the target spacecraft. The Space Force has described the mission as a test of its ability to respond rapidly to potentially threatening behavior in orbit. [SpaceNews]
China will select a final landing site for its Tianwen-3 Mars sample return before the end of the year. The mission's chief scientist said at a conference last week that teams have identified candidates at eight sites, which he did not identify, based on scientific characteristics such as the potential to host evidence of past Martian life. The Tianwen-3 mission is scheduled to launch in late 2028 using two Long March 5 rockets. These will separately carry a lander and ascent vehicle stack, and the Mars orbiter and Earth return spacecraft combination. After landing and collecting at least 500 grams of samples on the surface, the ascent vehicle will launch them into Mars orbit for rendezvous with the orbiter before returning to Earth in 2031. With the cancellation of NASA's Mars Sample Return program, Tianwen-3 is set to be the first to attempt to return samples from Mars. [SpaceNews]
Indian government officials said their push to commercialize space activities in the country is not meant to privatize the national space agency. A letter from nine employee groups at ISRO asked for clarification about plans to transfer launch vehicle and satellite manufacturing work from the agency to the private sector, including impacts on the agency's workforce. In a response, Pawan Kumar Goenka, head of the IN-SPACe, the organization responsible for commercializing space activities in India, said that while the private sector would take on more satellite and launch vehicle manufacturing, ISRO would still work on advanced programs, including the Gaganyaan crewed spacecraft and a planned space station, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station. [The Hindu]
Orbital data center company Cowboy Space is opening a Seattle office. The company is leasing a 290,000-square-foot industrial facility in the suburb of Kent, which it will use for production of orbital data center spacecraft. The company, founded as Aetherflux with plans for space-based solar power satellites, changed its name to Cowboy Space earlier this year as part of a pivot to orbital data centers. Its plans call for developing its own rockets for launching those satellites. [GeekWire]
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The Week Ahead
Tuesday-Wednesday:
Geneva: The Outer Space Security Conference 2026 by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research features sessions on space security and preventing conflict in outer space.
Seville, Spain: ESA's Zero Debris Week will discuss ESA's Zero Debris Charter and efforts to limit the growth of orbital debris.
Tuesday-Friday:
Wednesday:
Wednesday-Thursday:
Thursday:
Jiuquan, China: Projected launch of a Long March 2D with an undisclosed payload at 5 a.m. Eastern.
Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif.: Scheduled launch of a Falcon 9 on the USSF-153 mission for the U.S. Space Force at 11:37 a.m. Eastern.
Friday:
Sunday:
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