March 12, 2026

Space Force Officially Terminates AeroVironment Contract for Satellite Control Antennas (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force has formally terminated an estimated $1.7 billion contract with defense technology firm AeroVironment to build a new generation of antennas used to command and control military satellites. Company executives confirmed the decision during a March 10 earnings call, saying the government ended the agreement after unsuccessful renegotiations. (3/12)

Old NASA Science Satellite Plunges Back to Earth (Source: AP)
An old NASA science satellite plunged uncontrolled from orbit and reentered over the Pacific on Wednesday. The U.S. Space Force said the Van Allen Probe A came in west of the Galapagos Islands. (3/12)

Northrop Grumman's 1st 'Cygnus XL' Departs ISS (Source: Space.com)
The first mission of Northrop Grumman's big new cargo spacecraft is over. That freighter, known as Cygnus XL, left the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday morning (March 12), ending a nearly six-month orbital stay for the 23rd Northrop Grumman (NG-23) resupply mission to the orbital laboratory. (3/12)

Pentagon Eyes Cislunar Space As Next Strategic Frontier (Source: Aviation Week)
As the U.S. prepares to return astronauts to the Moon, the Pentagon is turning its focus to the vast region between traditional Earth orbits and its natural satellite as an emerging front for military operations. The Trump administration released an executive order in December focused on space superiority, calling for the U.S. to be capable of detecting, characterizing and countering threats from very low Earth orbit and through cislunar space and to become the standard-bearer for terrestrial and cislunar position, navigation and timing. (3/12)

York to Acquire Orbion (Source: Space News)
York Space Systems is acquiring satellite propulsion company Orbion Space Technology. York announced the acquisition Thursday but did not disclose terms of the deal. Orbion develops Hall-effect electric propulsion systems for small satellites. With the acquisition, York is bringing that capability in-house as part of a broader effort to control more of its satellite supply chain. Orbion had been a supplier to York, delivering 33 propulsion units in January for a military satellite program.  Orbion will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of York. (3/12)

Firefly Aces Alpha Launch at Vandenberg (Source: Space News)
Firefly Aerospace's Alpha rocket returned to flight Wednesday evening, more than 10 months after a launch failure. The Alpha lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, successfully reaching low Earth orbit. The rocket carried a demonstration payload for Lockheed Martin, but neither Lockheed nor Firefly disclosed additional details about it. The launch was the first for Alpha since an April 2025 failure. The launch was also the last for the current version of Alpha as Firefly plans to introduce an upgraded Block 2 version of the rocket later this year. (3/12)

NASA's IG Warns of Artemis Schedule Delays (Source: Space News)
NASA's inspector general said that the agency's approach to Artemis lunar lander development has controlled costs but not schedule. A report this week by the inspector general said there has been only minor cost growth on its Human Landing System (HLS) contracts with Blue Origin and SpaceX, and that growth has been linked in large part to changes to other elements of Artemis.

However, the report found significant schedule delays by both companies, particularly as they struggle with key technologies such as management of the cryogenic propellants their landers will use. The report did not incorporate recent changes to Artemis announced in the last few weeks, but the study raises questions about the ability of NASA and the companies to accelerate development of their landers. (3/12)

Australia's Enpulsion Raises $26 Million for Electric Propulsion (Source: Space News)
Austrian satellite propulsion company Enpulsion has raised its first major funding round. The company recently announced raising $26 million in a round led by German fund Nordwind Growth. Enpulsion said the funding will allow it to expand, including moving from sales of electric propulsion systems for smallsats to more complete mobility solutions for spacecraft. The company also is looking to expand its presence in the United States. (3/12)

Could NASA Use Expandable Habitats for Its Artemis Moon Bases? These Two Companies Are Betting Millions (Source: Space.com)
Commercial space infrastructure firm Voyager Technologies is backing lunar habitat developer Max Space with a new multi-million-dollar investment aimed at accelerating development of expandable modules for future missions to the moon. The companies say the partnership will help move expandable habitat technology toward operational missions by scaling up production, bolstering engineering efforts and integrating Voyager's technology systems with Max's habitat infrastructure. (3/11)

March 2026: The Goddard Centennial (Source: AIAA)
This March 16th will mark the 100th anniversary of Dr. Robert Goddard’s historic first flight of a liquid propulsion rocket, back in 1926. That flight is rocketry’s closest equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ first flight of an airplane at Kitty Hawk in 1903. And just like the similarly historic Kitty Hawk flight, Goddard’s pioneering first liquid propulsion flight opened the way to a world-changing future that all of humankind benefits from today. (3/12)

SkyDefender: Thales Unveils Europe’s Answer to Golden Dome (Source: AeroTime)
France’s Thales Group has unveiled details behind a new air and missile defense system in what many will see as Europe’s answer to US President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome announced last year. On March 11, 2025, Thales introduced SkyDefender to the world, describing the innovation as “a multi-layer, multi-domain integrated air and missile defense system”, designed to offer “full protection against all types of air threats, on land, at sea and in space”. (3/12)

FCC Proposes New Spectrum for Emergent Space Operations (Source: Mach 33)
The FCC has issued a proposal to open new spectrum access for telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C) to support "emergent spacecraft". The proposal seeks comment on new access for orbital labs, in-space servicing, and commercial stations, including a proposed Earth-to-space allocation in the 2320–2345 MHz band and other mechanisms meant to support non-traditional space operations.

This is the kind of quiet infrastructure story investors should care about. Orbital labs, in-space servicing, commercial stations, and other new vehicle classes do not scale cleanly if spectrum rules only fit legacy satellite archetypes. This reduces the long-term licensing risk for companies building complex orbital infrastructure that requires constant, high-reliability command links. (3/6)

After Falling Far Behind the Rest of Industry, Blue Origin Creates New Stock Option Plan (Source: Ars Technica)
Blue Origin has a lot to offer prospective employees: a compelling mission, high salaries, a demanding but not suffocating work environment, and more. But when it comes to one key aspect of retaining talent, Blue Origin rates far behind the rest of the industry. From the beginning, for example, SpaceX offered employee stock options.

Top aerospace engineers and technicians do not come cheap, and Blue Origin competes in a heated market for the best talent. On Monday afternoon, Blue Origin chief executive Dave Limp sent employees an email announcing a “new stock option” plan that would allow all employees to participate in and eventually convert vested options. (3/9)

Astronomers Collect Rare Evidence of Two Planets Colliding (Source: Phys.org)
Anastasios Tzanidakis was combing through old telescope data from 2020 when he found an otherwise boring star acting very strangely. The star, named Gaia20ehk, was about 11,000 light-years from Earth near the constellation Puppis. It was a stable "main sequence" star, much like our sun, which meant that it should emit steady, predictable light. Yet this star began to flicker wildly.

The cause of the flickering had nothing to do with the star itself: Huge quantities of rocks and dust—seemingly from out of nowhere—were passing in front of the distant star as the material orbited the system, patchily dimming the light that reached Earth. The likely source of all that debris was even more remarkable: a catastrophic collision between two planets. (3/11)

Musk and Bezos Moon Landers Could Leave Artemis Astronauts Stranded, NASA Watchdog Warns (Source: Gizmodo)
The findings, published by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General on Tuesday, reveal critical gaps in testing and crew survival analyses for both prospective landers: SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Lander. That’s a serious problem because if either lander encounters a catastrophic event, NASA will not be able to rescue the stranded crew from space or the lunar surface. (3/11)

Plan to Launch Spacecraft From Paso Robles Airport Takes a Key Step Forward (Source: The Tribune)
The city of Paso Robles is one step closer to getting a license to allow spacecraft to take off and land from its municipal airport. On March 4, the Paso Robles City Council unanimously voted to direct staff to make preparations to complete the FAA Commercial Spaceport License application process.

Staff were directed to prepare a request for proposals for the project. The move is the latest update in the city’s years-long goal to advance its Spaceport and Technology Corridor initiative — a project aimed at creating an economic hub for aerospace engineering in Paso Robles, in partnership with educational institutions like Cal Poly, Cuesta College and even K-12 career technical education programs. (3/9)

Meteorite Crashes Through Roof in Germany After Fiery Light Show (Source: New York Times)
This past weekend, people in Koblenz, Germany, might have found themselves asking an unusual question: Is my house insured against meteorite damage? Around 6:55 p.m. local time on Sunday, an extremely bright fireball burned through the twilight skies of northwestern Europe. Thousands of people in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Germany had no difficulty spotting the incandescent object as it moved rapidly toward the northeast.

News organizations reported that several buildings in the western German state of Rhineland-Palatinate had been damaged by mysterious debris that fell from the heavens. The roof of one house, in the town of Koblenz, appears to have been punctured by at least one larger meteorite — a shard that fell into the (fortunately unoccupied) bedroom below. (3/10)

Gravitational Waves Reveal Hidden Structure of Galactic Centers (Source: Phys.org)
A new study indicates that the dense, star- and dark-matter–rich environments around supermassive black hole binaries pack on the order of a million solar masses into each cubic parsec. The team used gravitational-wave data from pulsar timing arrays to probe galactic centers that are otherwise impossible to observe directly. (3/10)

Orbital Compute Supply Chain: Thermodynamics is Redrawing the Rules (Source: Mach 33)
This analysis maps the rapidly emerging orbital compute supply chain, showing how thermodynamics is now the dominant constraint driving new suppliers, capital flows, and talent demand. While consolidation and vertical integration (in particular SpaceX) will squeeze many early-stage component players, major breakthroughs in solar arrays and radiator technologies remain essential to reach viable 100 kW/ton power densities, creating a narrow set of high-risk, high-upside frontier investment opportunities. (3/11)

SpaceX Prepares for Starship Flight 12 and Raptor 3 Debut (Source: Mach 33)
SpaceX has moved through an important stretch of preflight work on Ship 39 ahead of Flight 12, including cryogenic proof testing, while Booster 19 advances in what would be the first integrated flight campaign for Starship V3 hardware. Elon Musk said the first V3 launch is about four weeks away, which points more to early April than mid-March.

By simplifying the engine design and increasing thrust-to-weight ratios, SpaceX is moving beyond the "experimental" phase of Starship into a production-ready architecture. This process is a live measure of iteration speed, engine maturity, and factory throughput. If SpaceX can bring materially upgraded hardware to flight on this cadence, it reinforces the company’s core edge, which is not just rocket performance but fast industrial learning at scale. (3/10)

Voyager’s 10-K Puts a Real Dollar Figure on Starship Heavy-lift Pricing (Source: Mach 33)
Voyager disclosed that Starlab has a $90.0 million commitment for one future launch service on board Starship. The filing does not disclose Starlab’s mass. Using SpaceX’s published Starship payload benchmark of up to 150 metric tons to LEO in fully reusable mode, implying a theoretical floor of roughly $600/kg. At a more conservative 100-ton utilization level, the implied figure is about $900/kg. The broader takeaway is more important than the exact math. This is early commercial price discovery for Starship-class lift. (3/8)