February 9, 2026

Sodern Picks Colorado for US Expansion (Source: OEDIT)
Governor Jared Polis and the Global Business Development Division of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), announced that Sodern America, a space equipment manufacturer and a global leader in satellite defense and communications technologies, has selected Colorado for its U.S. expansion. Sodern America is expected to create around 20 net new good-paying jobs with positions including engineers, quality, production and supply chain professionals, and business development.

The Colorado Economic Development Commission approved up to $110,094 in performance-based Job Growth Incentive Tax Credits for the company over an eight-year period. These incentives are contingent upon Sodern America, referred to as Project SAM throughout the OEDIT review process, meeting net new job creation and salary requirements. Douglas County is also providing local incentives to support the project. The Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation (Metro Denver EDC), the Colorado Space Coalition and Denver South began working with Sodern America in early 2025, to position the Metro Denver region as a competitive U.S. location. (2/2)

Viasat Releases UAV Satellite Connectivity Portfolio for Government Applications (Source: Unmanned Systems Technology)
Viasat, a developer of secure connectivity solutions, has introduced a next-generation satellite service portfolio specifically engineered to support the evolving demands of government Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operations. The new VuaLe portfolio is designed to meet stringent government requirements, offering enhanced flexibility, security, and operational control through a diverse range of terminals and connectivity services. (2/9)

Germany's OHB Establishes European Moonport Company (Source: European Spaceflight)
German space technology company OHB announced on 4 February that it has established a new subsidiary, the European Moonport Company, to consolidate all its efforts related to future missions to the Moon. While only recently made public, company records show that the subsidiary, registered as Luna Europa – European Moonport Company, was founded in May 2025. According to company records, the subsidiary will focus on lunar exploration and the development of infrastructure for a sustained presence on the Moon’s surface. In the near term, however, the company says it will primarily serve to consolidate OHB’s existing Moon-related activities. (2/8)

Alabama Raises Aerospace Profile in Singapore (Source: Yellowhammer News)
Alabama marked its first time participating in the Singapore Airshow, organizing a delegation with the state's Department of Commerce. Alabama is home to 300-plus aerospace companies, including Airbus, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Blue Origin, GE Aerospace and United Launch Alliance. Recent industry announcements have included $139 million in capital investment and 767 new jobs. (2/7)

Artemis, China and Musk Turn the Moon Into the Next Strategic High Ground (Source: Space Daily)
When Artemis II finally lights its engines and arcs away from Cape Canaveral, it will do more than send four astronauts on a ten-day loop around the Moon. It will fire the starting gun on a race that Washington and Beijing still insist does not exist and pull Elon Musk's SpaceX into the center of a contest that blends geopolitics, markets and myth.

For two years, NASA has framed Artemis as a "sustainable return" to the Moon, not a flag-planting sprint. Chinese officials describe their 2030 crewed landing goal as methodical national development, not a reaction to anyone else's timetable. Both descriptions are technically accurate, but both carefully avoid the obvious: space programs are not judged in spreadsheet columns; they are judged in headlines, live television and the stories nations tell about themselves. On those terms, the race is on, and the finish line is no longer just about who plants the next set of bootprints in the lunar regolith. It is about who defines the narrative of the first permanent phase of cislunar space. (2/9)

Dark Matter Core May Drive Milky Way Center (Source: Space Daily)
Our Milky Way galaxy may not host a supermassive black hole at its center but instead an enormous concentration of dark matter that exerts an equivalent gravitational influence on nearby stars and gas, according to new research published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The authors argue that this invisible substance, which makes up most of the universe's mass, can account both for the high speed orbits of stars only light hours from the galactic center and for the large scale rotation pattern seen in the Milky Way's outer regions. (2/8)

Germany's DLR Plans New Control Center for Future Moon and Mars Missions (Source: Space Daily)
For upcoming human and robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) will establish a new Human Exploration Control Center (HECC) at its site in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich. The new facility will expand the existing German Space Operations Center (GSOC) and is designed to manage complex, long-duration missions beyond low Earth orbit while reinforcing Germany and Europe's strategic autonomy in spaceflight.
The Free State of Bavaria is supporting construction of the HECC with 58 million euros, while DLR is contributing an additional 20 million euros from its institutional core funding. (2/8)

Israel's Gilat Books Multimillion Order for Sidewinder Inflight ESA Terminals (Source: Space Daily)
Gilat Satellite Networks has secured a multimillion order from a major global avionics company for its Sidewinder electronically steered antenna inflight connectivity terminals designed by Gilat Stellar Blu, with deliveries scheduled over the next six months. The new contract underscores growing momentum for the Sidewinder ESA platform as airlines and service providers look to deploy advanced inflight connectivity solutions that combine high performance with low profile, lightweight hardware. (2/8)

America Reclaims Its Dominance in Space (Source: Wall Street Journal)
The first manned moon mission since 1972 will launch next month. China, meanwhile, is struggling. Just two years ago, America’s longstanding dominance in space seemed under threat. China had been surging ahead for more than a decade and planned to become the world’s leading space power. It had two successful robot moon landings, which returned with lunar samples in 2020 and 2024. It completed the Tiangong (“Heavenly Palace”) orbital space station in 2022. Most troubling: Beijing continues to test and develop antisatellite weapons that could cripple the GPS and other space-based systems on which the U.S. would rely in time of war.

In 2023 officials including Bill Nelson, then administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, warned that China was trying to establish a dominant foothold on the moon by 2030, with the aim of seizing resource-rich areas near the lunar south pole. Mr. Nelson said the Chinese might assert sovereignty over the moon itself. Stopping them didn’t seem a Biden administration priority, especially when space-capsule safety problems stranded two American astronauts at the International Space Station for more than nine months. (2/8)

Naval Group Announces Partnership with Astrolight to Supply Ships with Jam-Proof Laser Communication Terminals (Source: Astrolight)
French shipbuilding giant Naval Group and Lithuanian space-tech company Astrolight signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU). The MoU marks the beginning of a collaboration between the two companies to test Astrolight’s POLARIS laser terminal on Naval Group’s vessels, exploring the potential for future integration of the technology. The partnership comes as Naval Group works to design a new multi-purpose vessel for the Lithuanian Navy, with plans to equip the ship with POLARIS. (2/9)

SpaceX IPO Could Benefit Other Space Companies (Source: Space News)
An investor in two space companies that went public in the last year believes a planned SpaceX IPO could help other companies in the sector. Kirk Konert, managing partner at AE Industrial Partners, said last week that the size of the upcoming SpaceX IPO means investors will need to evaluate the space sector, which could include what other companies are worth investing in or taking public. AE Industrial Partners invested in Firefly Aerospace, which went public last summer, and York Space Systems, which had its IPO in late January. He said both IPOs were heavily oversubscribed, showing strong interest by institutional investors in space companies. (2/9)

NASA Making Adjustments to SLS for Next Launch Rehearsal (Source: NASA)
NASA says it is making progress on repairs needed for the Space Launch System ahead of a second countdown rehearsal. NASA said late Sunday that technicians had replaced two seals in a hydrogen fueling system for the SLS after leaks were detected there in last week's wet dress rehearsal (WDR). NASA has not set a date for a second WDR and plans to do additional tests in the coming days. The next launch opportunity for the Artemis 2 mission is early March. (2/9)

UK Astronomers Affected by Space Budget Cut (Source: Space.com)
The British astronomy community is warning about the effects of a proposed major budget cut. The U.K. government has proposed a 30% cut to physics and astronomy research, the head of the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council said in a recent letter. Astronomers warned the proposed cuts will affect their ability to use new facilities the government has helped fund, like the Extremely Large Telescope and Square Kilometer Array. Students and early-career researchers could be disproportionately affected by the cuts, groups like the Royal Astronomical Society said. The move comes after the U.K. government reduced its contribution to the European Space Agency as last November's ministerial even as other member countries significantly increased their spending. (2/9)

Can Current Space Law Handle the New Space Age? (Source: Space.com)
Even when there is agreement that something needs to be done on a given matter, such as preventing collisions between an ever-growing number of satellites, coming together and reaching agreement is tough. The main framework for space governance, the Outer Space Treaty, was formulated in 1967 during a Cold War era in which there were just a few state actors active in space, minimal space traffic and no private endeavors. Ely Sandler proposes a Conference of Parties (COP) approach — similar to processes used in climate, biodiversity and arms-control negotiations — for discussing and tackling key issues in space governance, aimed at driving dialogue and developing binding norms, before avoidable crises emerge. (2/9)

Decoding China’s New Space Philosophy (Source: Universe Today)
A major theme in communist governments is the idea of central planning. Every five years, the central authorities in communist countries lay out their goals for the country over the course of the next five years, which can range from limiting infant mortality to increasing agricultural yield. China, the largest current polity ruled by communists, recently released its fifteenth five-year plan, which lays out its priorities for 2026-2030. This one has plenty of ambitious goals for its space sector.

Perhaps the most culturally significant part of the announcement is the country’s plans for Tiangong Kaiwu, its space mining project. Named after a foundational 17th century Ming Dynasty Encyclopedia, and roughly translated as “The Exploitation of the Works for Nature,” this project is focused on mining water ice from resources in space. Click here. (2/9)

ESA is Preparing to Announce Aeolus-2 Prime Contractor (Source: European Spaceflight)
The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved the selection of the prime contractor for its Aeolus-2 weather satellite and is preparing to conclude an initial €70 million award to begin the next phase of its development. Aeolus-2 is the planned operational successor to the original Aeolus mission, which was built by Airbus Defense and Space and deorbited in early 2023. Aeolus-2 will consist of two satellites, launched sequentially, each carrying a Doppler Wind Lidar instrument. The instrument is unique in being the first space-based Doppler wind lidar capable of measuring global wind profiles from the lower atmosphere up to the stratosphere. (2/9)

There’s a Way Forward for Sovereign European Space Intel, But is There the Will? (Source: Space News)
Germany’s top intelligence officials made waves last year by calling for the creation of a European spy network to lessen Europe’s dependence on American intelligence. After Washington’s sudden freeze of American intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March, German officials — and their European counterparts — have grown increasingly attuned to deficiencies in key capabilities they need to deter Russia amid a less-reliable United States security commitment. One such deficiency lies in the realm of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites. European countries need to scale up their ability to share satellite data through existing EU institutions, or risk being left blind and deaf to aggressive Russian activity if the American security commitment to Europe continues to wane. European states have the mechanisms to begin solving this problem, but only if they have the political will to pool information traditionally kept in their respective capitols. (2/9)

Houston, We Have a Problem (Source: Persuasion)
Many Americans may be surprised to learn that NASA has been trying to return to the moon for two decades now, but hasn’t been able to do so. Something has gone wrong with American state capacity. Getting to the moon in eight years under the Apollo program was perhaps the most vivid example of American government prowess. It came on the heels of other major accomplishments in the 20th century: big infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and electrification of the upper South under the Tennessee Valley Authority; mobilization for the Second World War, and victory over Japan and Germany; and then, after the war, construction of the interstate highway system. The United States in this period was seen globally as the exemplar of modernity, a country able to master complex technology and use it for important public purposes.

Since the 1960s, however, American state capacity has declined. The United States has world-beating tech companies that are currently racing to build artificial intelligence data centers. The U.S. military remains the best in the world. But other parts of the government have struggled to master difficult tasks like building a high-speed rail system, rolling out healthcare.gov, or connecting rural communities with broadband. This lack of capacity is evident in NASA itself. Why has it taken so long, and cost so much money, to repeat a feat that was accomplished 50 years ago? (2/8)