March 19, 2026

Rocket Lab Wins 20 HASTE Launches From DoD at Virginia Spaceport (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab announced Wednesday it won a Pentagon contract for 20 launches of the suborbital version of its Electron rocket. The $190 million award, issued by the Pentagon's Test Resource Management Center under its Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed, or MACH-TB 2.0, program covers 20 missions scheduled over the next four years of Rocket Lab's HASTE vehicle. The contract follows a recent HASTE launch from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia carrying a hypersonic aircraft developed by Australia-based Hypersonix. With this latest award, Rocket Lab says its launch backlog now exceeds 70 missions. (3/19)

NASA Plans Monthly Uncrewed Lunar Lander Missions (Source: Space News)
NASA wants to start flying robotic lunar landers on a monthly basis as soon as next year. While the agency has not made a formal announcement, officials including Administrator Jared Isaacman have talked recently about rapidly increasing the cadence of robotic landers that could assist in plans to develop a lunar base. That would leverage the existing CLPS program supporting commercial lunar landers, although officials said other procurement mechanisms could be used. NASA said it will include science payloads on all of those missions, although in some cases those may be tech demos of instruments in development. One challenge to increasing the cadence of landers is the handful of companies currently building landers at a pace of about one per year, and the mixed record of missions conducted so far by CLPS. (3/19)

Finland's ReOrbit to Develop Two Satellites for Ka-Band Comms (Source: Space News)
Finnish satellite manufacturer ReOrbit has signed a contract with asset-financing company SLI for two small GEO communications satellites. ReOrbit announced Thursday the contract, valued at 150 million euros ($172 million), with the two satellites to be delivered four months apart in 2029. The satellites will have software-defined Ka-band communications payloads and 10-year lifetimes. SLI plans to lease the satellites to companies and countries using a business model similar to airliner leasing. (3/19)

Apex Sells Satellite Bus to NEC (Source: Space News)
Apex has sold one of its Aries satellite buses to Japanese company NEC. The companies announced the sale on Thursday, with NEC using the bus to fly an optical communications technology demonstration mission in 2027. That mission could be a precursor to a future constellation. Apex, which has largely focused on U.S. government customers, says it is seeing growing international demand for its spacecraft buses. The company is currently producing about two dozen satellites a year at its factory, with plans to increase that production to 200 annually. (3/19)

As Golden Dome’s Price Tag Rises, Some Say New Estimate is No More Credible (Source: FNN)
The Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense system is getting more expensive. Gen. Michael Guetlein, Golden Dome’s program manager, said Tuesday the Pentagon is now at “$185 billion for the objective architecture, which delivers way out into the 2035 timeframe.” The price tag is already $10 billion higher than what President Trump said the system would cost last year. Guetlein said the additional funding is needed to support airborne moving target indication (AMTI), space data networking and hypersonic missile tracking. “We were asked to prepare some additional space capabilities,” Guetlein said.

Shortly after the president announced the initiative, the Congressional Budget Office, Congress’ nonpartisan budget watchdog, estimated that a limited space-based interceptor system that could be deployed as part of Golden Dome could cost between $161 billion and $542 billion. An analysis done by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, estimated that a robust Golden Dome architecture could cost about $3.6 trillion over 20 years — that figure includes operations, maintenance and replenishment costs. (3/18)

Kongsberg Solar Array Contract Sheds Light on South Korea NatSec Constellation Plans (Source: Space News)
South Korea's plans for a national security constellation are coming into sharper focus with a contract for solar cells. Lithuania-based small satellite specialist Kongsberg NanoAvionics announced Wednesday a multi-million-euro contract to provide kilowatt-class solar arrays to Flexell Space, a South Korean startup that is supporting the LEO constellation. The deal adds to details emerging around the secretive program led by South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Systems, which recently partnered with Canada's MDA Space and Telesat to develop next-generation LEO capabilities. An initial demonstration satellite for that system is planned to launch as soon as the second half of 2027. (3/19)

Space Command Plans Wargame Next Week in Colorado (Source: Space News)
U.S. Space Command officials and representatives from 25 commercial space companies will participate in a classified wargame next week in Colorado Springs. The exercise is the first in a series of quarterly wargames in 2026 that will include commercial participants as part of a broader effort to bring industry more directly into classified planning. A Space Force general said Wednesday the decision to classify the wargame will allow for a level of intelligence sharing that has not previously been extended to commercial partners. (3/19)

Astronauts Perform Spacewalk at ISS (Source: Space.com)
Two NASA astronauts performed a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday. Jessica Meir and Chris Williams completed the seven-hour spacewalk at 3:54 p.m. Eastern after carrying out their primary tasks. That work involved the installation of a mount for a new solar panel that will be added to the station on a future spacewalk. Some additional tasks were deferred to a future spacewalk because of the limited time available. The spacewalk was the first from the U.S. segment of the station since last May, and took place on the 61st anniversary of the first spacewalk by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. (3/19)

China Identifies Asteroid Target for Kinetic Deflection Test (Source: Space News)
China has identified a new target near Earth asteroid for its first planetary defense kinetic test mission. Long Lehao, a senior official with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, said at a Chinese conference thar the redirect test misison would go to 2016 WP8, a small Aten-class near Earth asteroid. The mission would launch in late 2027, with an observer spacecraft rendezvousing with the asteroid before a separate impactor spacecraft collides with the asteroid to change its orbit. (3/19)

TransAstra Proposes Near Earth Asteroid Mission (Source: Space News)
An American company is proposing moving a small near Earth asteroid. TransAstra has outlined plans for a mission that could launch in 2028 or 2029 to go to an asteroid weighing about 100 metric tons and move it to a stable orbit in the Earth-Moon system. Once there, additional missions could extract resources from it for space industrial applications. The concept is similar to NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission proposed more than a decade ago, but later canceled. (3/19)

Firefly Wins Collier Trophy for Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Accomplishment (Source: NAA)
Firefly Aerospace is the winner of a prestigious aerospace trophy. The National Aeronautic Association announced Wednesday it selected Firefly's Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander mission for the Collier Trophy, awarded annually for the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America. Recent winners of the trophy include the Parker Solar Probe, OSIRIS-REx and James Webb Space Telescope missions. (3/19)

NASA Demotes SLS in Artemis Moon Plan (Source: Douglas Messier)
NASA has announced a new Artemis mission architecture in which the Space Launch System (SLS) will launch the Orion spacecraft into Earth orbit where it will dock with SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander. Starship will propel the two vehicles into orbit around the Moon.

NASA’s previous plan had SLS sending Orion into a near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) around the Moon where it would have docked with SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander. The astronaut-tended Gateway station would also be placed in NRHO.

Under NASA’s new plan, the Orion-Starship configuration would be placed in a lower orbit around the Moon. Reports indicate that NASA will stay with SLS through the Artemis V mission, which would be the second crewed landing on the Moon. (3/19)

Finland Rises n European Space Agency (Source: Business Finland)
Finnish Kimmo Kanto, who works at Business Finland, has been appointed as Vice-Chair of the Council of the European Space Agency in Interlaken, Switzerland, on March 19, 2026.  Kanto will begin his term on July 1. The ESA Council is the organization’s highest strategic decision-making body, and Kanto is the first Finnish representative to hold the position.  At Business Finland, Kanto is the Director of the Space, Defense and Connectivity unit. (3/19)

NASA Pinpoints Where Meteorites May Have Fallen After Northeast Ohio Fireball (Source: Cleveland.com)
If meteorites from Tuesday morning’s fireball reached the ground, scientists say they’re most likely to be found in a narrow band across mostly Medina County. A new analysis from NASA’s Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science office maps out that potential “strewn field” — the area where fragments from the exploding space rock were expected to land — stretching roughly from northern Medina County between Hinckley and Richfield south-southwest toward Rittman and parts of Wayne County. (3/18)

Firefly Aerospace Looks Ahead to Moon Missions, More Launches After Alpha Rocket’s Return to Flight (Source: Austin American Statesman)
Prior to last week's launch, only Alpha's third and fifth missions had been unqualified successes. Firefly has a growing portfolio of contracts with government and commercial entities, including NASA, the U.S. Space Force, Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., and others.

The company still has not set a launch date for its next Moon mission, but it is expected sometime next year. This new mission will take the U.S. to the far side of the Moon, where the country has never gone before. The lander will also be different from its successful mission a year ago. Instead of a roughly six-foot-tall lander, the mission will take not only the lander but also two orbital vehicles, one of which will be for the European Space Agency, making the lander more than 22 feet tall. (3/17)

ESA Seeks Scalable VLEO Platforms for Satellite Video (Source: ESA)
Today's Earth observation satellites deliver snapshots – precise and valuable, but static. Many of the most consequential events on Earth, from wildfires to floods to urban crises, unfold over minutes and hours. A new SysNova campaign is looking for ideas that could change that.

The Scalable VLEO Platform for Satellite Video campaign invites industry and academia to develop disruptive mission concepts for continuous, high-fidelity video monitoring from Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO). Satellites operating at VLEO altitudes – typically 250 to 350 km – are significantly closer to Earth's surface than conventional Earth observation spacecraft, offering sharper resolution, lower latency, and improved revisit and persistence characteristics. (3/17)

Starlink service launches in UAE (Source: The National)
Elon Musk's satellite internet service can now be accessed in the UAE. Packages for Starlink, owned and operated by Mr Musk's SpaceX, are advertised on the site as starting from Dh230 a month. It offers a residential service with the standard kit costing Dh1,545, including shipping, estimated at between one week and two weeks. In the Middle East, Starlink is also available in Qatar, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan and Israel. (3/18)

SES Sells ‘Space Bonds’ Ranked Lower Than Hybrids (Source: Luxembourg Times)
European satellite operator SES SA, a rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink network, has launched the sale of unusually structured hybrid bonds, which it hopes will help it reclaim an investment-grade credit rating. The company aims to raise an expected €500 million by issuing so-called Space bonds — subordinated perpetual with automatic conversion events — for which investors have placed more than €3 billion of bids so far, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified. (3/17)

Where Are All the Aliens? Maybe They Just Don't Want to Talk to Us (Source: Space.com)
"Advanced extraterrestrials may not be shy, they may simply be prudent," Erik Geslin said. "If extraterrestrial civilizations are biocentric or ecocentric, humanity may not yet appear to them as a safe partner for contact. Such civilizations might simply be cautious."

Other starfolk may understand very well the potential risks involved in interacting with humanity, a species that is still strongly anthropocentric, heavily resource-driven and often conflict-prone, according to Geslin. "What we interpret as silence might therefore not reflect fear, but prudence! Perhaps even a kind of ethical restraint. In that sense, their behavior could resemble a principle of non-interference," he said. (3/17)

Pentagon Developing Space-Centric National Defense Strategy (Source: Aviation Week)
The Defense Department and its partner agencies are crafting a new national defense strategy dedicated to space security, a senior department official said March 17. One key area of focus will be the department’s future space-based position, navigation and timing (PNT) capability, “and assuring that that is not only robust, but resilient,” Marc Berkowitz said. The top two priorities in the unclassified version of the 2026 strategy—homeland defense and deterring China—are “fundamentally enabled by our space capabilities,” he said. (3/17)

Iran War Drives DoD Budget Spike (Source: Washington Post)
The Pentagon has asked the White House to approve a more than $200 billion request to Congress to fund the war in Iran. Even before the war in Iran, President Trump had called for a $1.5 trillion defense budget, a more than 50 percent increase from the previous year. The enormous new ask that is almost certain to run into resistance from lawmakers opposed to the conflict. (3/18)