May 22, 2025

Blue Origin Announces Crew for New Shepard’s 32nd Mission (Source: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin today announced the six people flying on its NS-32 mission. The crew includes Aymette Medina Jorge, Dr. Gretchen Green, Jaime Alemán, Jesse Williams, Mark Rocket, and Paul Jeris. This mission is the 12th human flight for the New Shepard program and the 32nd overall. The flight date will be announced soon. (5/21)

Golden Dome Missile Shield Estimated to Cost $175 Billion (Source: Defense News)
President Donald Trump has revealed the Golden Dome missile shield, estimating a $175 billion cost over three years, aiming for completion before his term ends. The project, overseen by Gen. Michael Guetlein, involves next-generation technologies, including space-based interceptors, to counter threats from peer adversaries and rogue nations. While some components are in development, the timeline for advanced elements like hypersonic interceptors is ambitious. (5/20)

Uncrewed Lunar Lander Test Set for This Year as Private Spaceflight Advances (Source: Aviation Week)
Blue Origin plans to demonstrate its Human Landing System with an uncrewed lunar landing this year. The Mark I lander is designed to carry 3.9 tons and will launch on the company's New Glenn rocket. (5/20)

Viasat, BMW Satellite-to-Car Connectivity Test is a Success (Source: Aviation Week)
Viasat has conducted a demonstration in Paris, sending signals directly from a satellite to BMW vehicles to showcase emergency messaging and hazard warnings. The test, performed with the 5G Automotive Association, included the first live-traffic demonstration of 5G-V2X Direct technology for detecting pedestrians and cyclists on roadways. (5/19)

Is Gravity Quantum? (Source: Space Daily)
"While we've achieved quantum-limited precision below the zero-point motion of the oscillator, reaching the actual quantum ground state remains our next goal," he says. "To do that, we'll need to further strengthen the optical interaction - using an optical cavity that amplifies angular signals, or optical trapping strategies. These improvements could open the door to experiments where two such oscillators interact only through gravity, allowing us to directly test whether gravity is quantum or not." (5/21)

Reusable Debris Collector Promises Leap Forward in Sustainable Space Cleanup (Source: Space Daily)
Paladin Space, a startup incubated at the University of South Australia's Innovation and Collaboration Centre, has introduced Triton, the first reusable space payload designed to capture and store multiple pieces of orbital debris for potential recycling. This breakthrough technology was demonstrated at a private event hosted by the ICC. The company's next objectives include securing early customers, initiating in-orbit testing, and preparing for mission qualification. Paladin Space also hinted at a forthcoming international expansion. (5/21)

Exolaunch Secures Multi Year SpaceX Rideshare Launch Deal Through 2028 (Source: Space Daily)
Exolaunch has signed new multi-year launch agreements with SpaceX, ensuring small satellite launch capacity through 2028 on Falcon 9 rideshare missions. The agreements span various orbital inclinations including sun-synchronous, mid-inclination, near-polar, and dawn-dusk trajectories to meet diverse mission requirements. These contracts allow Exolaunch to continue integrating and deploying satellites of all sizes-from CubeSats up to 16U formats, to microsatellites weighing 20 to 800 kilograms, and larger payloads. (5/21)

NASA Selects Rocket for U of A-led Aspera Mission (Source: University of Arizona)
NASA has selected Rocket Lab to launch the agency's Aspera mission, which consists of a small satellite, or SmallSat, to study galaxy formation and evolution and provide new insights into how the universe works. The Aspera mission is led by one of the youngest principal investigators in NASA history – Carlos J. Vargas, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory. (5/20)

South Africa to Offer Musk Starlink Deal Before Trump Meet (Source: Bloomberg)
South Africa’s government plans to offer Elon Musk a workaround of local Black-ownership laws for his Starlink internet service to operate in the country, aiming to ease tensions with both the billionaire and US President Donald Trump. The offer will come at a last-minute meeting planned for Tuesday night between Musk or his representatives and a delegation of South African officials traveling with President Cyril Ramaphosa, according to three people familiar with the discussions. (5/20)

Tesla, SpaceX Reputations Crater in New Poll (Source: Axios)
Tesla Motors and SpaceX saw their brand reputations crater in the past year, according to new Axios Harris Poll 100 survey results. Elon Musk's polarizing political activism appears to have come at the expense of his largest companies, as Republicans expressed more favorable opinions than did Democrats.

Tesla was in 8th place in a 2021 reputation ranking, but last year tumbled to 63rd and now is near the very bottom at 95th. It placed dead last in "character," while placing near the bottom in areas like "ethics" and "citizenship." SpaceX experienced a similar reputation quotient score decline between 2024 and 2025. On the one hand, SpaceX may care less than Tesla does, because it's not consumer-facing. On the other, the 28.7% difference between Republicans and Democrats could foretell procurement problems were there to be a political power shift. (5/20)

Space Force Losing 14% of its Civilian Workers (Sources: Defense One, Defense One)
The Space Force is losing nearly 14 percent of its civilian workers—about 780 people—due to the Trump administration’s effort to dramatically cut the federal workforce, the service’s chief said Tuesday. That’s more than other military branches, and it means the service will end the year with nearly 1,000 fewer people than expected. Initiatives such as early retirement and voluntary-resignation programs have had an “outsized impact” on the youngest service, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Tuesday during a Senate Armed Service committee hearing.

The Pentagon wants to cut about 8% of its civilian workforce as part of a broader effort to slash the federal government’s footprint. As of mid-March, the Defense Department had approved 21,000 resignations, and more reductions are expected to come through early retirement incentives and moves to fire a portion of the department’s probationary employees.Civilians comprise about 5,600, or more than one-third, of the service’s 17,000 people. (5/21)

Satellite Startups Race to Enhance Wildfire Detection and Response (Source: Space News)
A new generation of Earth monitoring satellites is emerging to help responders detect and react to wildfires more quickly. Muon Space, which launched its FireSat protoflight mission in March, is developing a dedicated constellation of satellites to track wildfires globally in near real-time. The company is working with the nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance to build out the “FireSat” network in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Germany’s OroraTech recently announced a new funding round and opened its U.S. headquarters in Denver, Colorado. With 10 satellites already in orbit, the company said its Denver office will serve as a central hub connecting U.S. emergency services, utility providers, and government agencies with its wildfire mapping and analysis platform.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which can penetrate smoke and see through cloud cover, is increasingly used in disaster scenarios. Madison Creeden, director of business development at Iceye US, the American arm of Finnish SAR satellite operator Iceye, said better coordination between satellite providers and emergency agencies is needed. She pointed to procurement delays as a persistent problem. (5/21)

Satellites Take Frontline Role in Maritime Security (Source: Space News)
The oceans are becoming more dangerous, and satellites are being called in to help. Demand for space-based maritime surveillance is accelerating, driven by rising geopolitical tensions, economic chokepoints and illegal maritime activity, according to a new report from the market research firm Quilty Space.

The firm’s findings spotlight a global push by governments and industries to improve maritime domain awareness (MDA), the all-encompassing term for tracking what ships are where, carrying what, and doing what. (5/21)

Ursa, University of Illinois and Palantir Win NGA Contracts (Source: Space News)
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced awards May 21 to Palantir Technologies, the University of Illinois and Ursa Space Systems. Through a $13.8 million Luno A task order, Ursa will provide unclassified commercial geospatial intelligence analytics of petroleum-based production and storage facilities, said NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth.
(5/21)

Space Force, Governors at Odds Over Plans to Pull Talent From National Guard Units (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
The head of the U.S. Space Force is moving ahead with plans to pull talent from Air National Guard units to help build up the still new military service — but several governors remain opposed and argue it tramples on their rights to retain control over their state units.

Overall, the plan would affect only 578 service members across six states and the Air National Guard headquarters and augment the Space Force without creating a separate Space Force National Guard — something the service has said would not be efficient because it would be so small. (5/16)

The Weather Service Planned to Reinvent Itself, Then Came DOGE (Source: Orlando Sentinel)
Ken Graham had a plan. When he became the director of the National Weather Service during the Biden administration, Graham introduced “Ken’s 10,” a list of priorities he hoped would streamline the department. In January, addressing a conference hall full of meteorologists in New Orleans, he ticked off some successes, like replacing an antiquated and siloed communications system.

There were challenges, too: Outdated technology and a stagnant budget made it difficult to get employees to stick around. But in a speech that sounded almost like a sales pitch, Graham reminded those in the audience that their work saved lives and, at the cost to every taxpayer of about $4 a year, offered a great return on investment.

The crowd was skeptical. But Graham assured them the weather office fit into the incoming administration’s agenda. The agency was already lean and had a plan to be more efficient. He just needed time. Instead, a few weeks later, the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative led by Elon Musk reshaping the federal bureaucracy, delivered the same order to the Weather Service that it has across the rest of the government: Make cuts. A lot of them. (5/15)

Trump Cuts Are Killing a Tiny Office That Keeps Measurements of the World Accurate (Source: WIRED)
A tiny but crucial agency that maintains physical coordinates like latitude and longitude in the US is struggling as the Trump administration forces out federal employees. Staff losses at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS), the oldest scientific agency in the US, could further cripple its mission and activities, including a long-awaited project to update the accuracy of these measurements, former employees and experts say.

As the world turns more and more toward operations that need precise coordinate systems like the ones NGS provides, the science that underpins this office’s activities, these experts say, is becoming even more crucial. The work of NGS, says Tim Burch, the executive director of the National Society of Professional Surveyors, “is kind of like oxygen. You don’t know you need it until it’s not there.” NGS was formed in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson. (5/21)

ESA Seeks Funding for ‘Security and Resilience’ Satellite Program (Source: Space News)
The European Space Agency will ask member states to fund an Earth observation satellite system for "security and resilience" applications. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said member states are interested in a satellite system that "allows a much better intelligence of the situation around the world," including improved revisit times compared to existing European national satellite systems. The system ESA will seek funding for at its November ministerial conference will be the first step towards a future Earth Observation Government Service led by the European Commission. (5/22)

Space Force and NGA Agree on Better Cooperation (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) signed an agreement Wednesday intended to end turf battles between the two. The agreement describes the agencies' roles and responsibilities in acquiring and providing commercial imagery, remote sensing data and associated products, enhancing support to the combatant commands while minimizing redundancy and duplication of effort.

The pact comes amid increasing military demands for faster access to space-based intelligence, particularly commercial satellite imagery, and criticism of the NGA and National Reconnaissance Office for creating bureaucratic bottlenecks that slow the delivery of intelligence to military combatant commands. The Space Force had created a program known as TacSRT program (Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking) that leverages commercial satellite imagery and data analytics to support military operations. (5/22)

Demand Increasing for Maritime Surveillance (Source: Space News)
A new report finds accelerating demand for space-based maritime surveillance capabilities. The study by Quilty Space points to a sharp uptick in disruptive maritime events over the past five years as a major driver of demand, as well as the global fight against illegal fishing. The shift comes as nations move to counter activities by China's distant-water fleets.

Maritime tracking has traditionally relied on Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, but that data is increasingly vulnerable to spoofing and manipulation, while some ships turn off their transponders. Companies are turning to "tip and cue" models where one satellite detects radio-frequency emissions and hands that data over to imaging satellites to identify the source of the emissions. (5/22)

Blue Origin Unveils Transporter Spacecraft for Lunar Exploration (Source: Space News)
Two years after winning a NASA award for an Artemis lunar lander, Blue Origin has provided an update on its plans. At a conference this week, Blue Origin showed off a new design of a cislunar "transporter" spacecraft that is part of its Blue Moon Mark 2 lander that will take astronauts to the lunar surface. The transporter will be fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in low Earth orbit, then go to lunar orbit to fuel the Blue Moon lander.

The transporter can also deliver 100 metric tons to the moon or, with minor modifications, 30 metric tons to Mars. Blue Origin is separately working on its smaller Blue Moon Mark 1 robotic lander, with a first mission to the south polar region of the moon still scheduled for later this year. (5/22)

PiLogic Raises $4 Million for Satellite AI (Source: Space News)
PiLogic has raised a seed round to develop satellite diagnostics and other artificial intelligence tools tailored for space applications. The startup announced Thursday a $4 million seed round led by Scout Ventures and Seraphim Space. The company has developed software that can be used on spacecraft to monitor electrical power systems, including the ability to resolve issues autonomously. The software will be first used on a satellite launching later this year for an undisclosed customer, and PiLogic said it is currently being tested by several large satellite operators and dual-use commercial/government companies. (5/22)

100th Woman in Space Aims to Inspire After Blue Origin Flight (Source: Space.com)
Emily Calandrelli made history as the 100th woman to travel to space during Blue Origin's NS-28 suborbital flight in November 2024. Calandrelli, or "The Space Gal," is dedicated to advancing STEM education and accessibility. Following her NS-28 flight, she continues to inspire through her YouTube channel, "Emily's Science Lab," which focuses on making science engaging and approachable for families and young people. (5/20)