May 17, 2026

SpaceX to FCC: $4.5B Broadband Program Is Unnecessary. Starlink Has It Covered (Source: PC Mag)
SpaceX is telling the FCC to consider ending a $4.5 billion fund that subsidizes voice and broadband in rural areas, arguing that Starlink has solved the connectivity gap by offering fast speeds at competitive rates. “The Commission’s universal service programs must adapt to a reality where the long-standing problem of high-speed broadband network access has effectively been solved, rendering most legacy High-Cost support mechanisms redundant,” the company wrote. (5/15)

New Theory of Dark Matter Could Solve Three Cosmic Mysteries (Source: Universe Today)
A new type of dark matter is proposed that can explain three astrophysical mysteries in vastly different fields. In essence, the study proposed that dense clumps of Self-Interacting Dark Matter (SIDM) can account for the gravitational effects of gravitational lenses, stellar streams, and satellite galaxies. The team's study, "Core-Collapsed SIDM Halos as the Common Origin of Dense Perturbers in Lenses, Streams, and Satellites,” suggests that particle interactions can lead to “gravothermal collapse,” where particles form extremely dense, compact cores a million times the mass of the Sun. (5/15)

NASA Shifts Wallops Management From Goddard to KSC (Source: NASA Watch)
NASA Wallops employees in Code 800 have been informed that they're now under KSC management effective immediately and that GSFC ETD leadership had been instructed to cancel their travel to Wallops. These employees were also told that an email with more details would be coming later this week. (5/13)

Starship V3 Will Do Something Completely New on Flight 12 (Source: Space.com)
While the mission will be Starship's 12th overall, it will mark the debut of the advanced new V3 vehicle, which features a number of important modifications and upgrades compared to its predecessors. (That helps explain the long launch lacuna.) Finally, while Starship will fly a familiar suborbital trajectory on Flight 12, it will do something completely new while it's up there — take a good, long look at itself.

The Flight 12 plan calls for Starship's upper stage, known as Ship, to deploy 22 dummy versions of SpaceX's Starlink broadband spacecraft. These will be "similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites," including two inspector spacecraft. They will scan Starship's heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to test methods of analyzing Starship's heat shield readiness for return to launch site on future missions. (5/14)

David Attenborough Turned 100 — and His Oldest Argument Against Space Exploration is the Same Conclusion Most Astronauts Come Home With (Source: Space Daily)
In October 1980, David Attenborough said the only place a human being was likely to travel within thirty or forty years was, in his words, “not nearly as interesting as this very precious earth of ours.” He has not changed his position in the forty-six years since. The line he is most often paired with — that he wishes the world were twice as big and half of it still unexplored. What has gone less remarked is that the position he has held for almost half a century — that the most interesting planet in the solar system is the one we are already standing on — is now also, with very few caveats, the conclusion most astronauts come home with. (5/14)

Space Force Awards Northrop Grumman $398 Million Satellite Contract (Source: Space News)
The U.S. Space Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $398 million contract to build a prototype communications satellite intended to demonstrate anti-jamming technologies for military operations in contested environments, the Space Systems Command said May 15. (5/16)

Rocket Lab Targets Missile Defense and Golden Dome as Its Next Growth Market (Source: Motley Foo;l)
By now you've heard the news: Golden Dome, President Trump's $151 billion plan to build a satellite-based missile shield over America, has been expanded with the award of a $3.2 billion umbrella contract to develop a system of "space-based interceptor" missiles, or SBIs, to shoot down hostile missiles. Concurrent with its earnings report last week, Rocket Lab announced Friday that it's partnering with RTX on the latter's bid for work under the SBI contract. (5/15)

New Golden Dome ‘Ecosystem Hub’ Will Vet New Tech, Monitor Industrial Base (Source: Air and Space Forces)
The leaders of the Pentagon’s Golden Dome program say a new “Ecosystem Hub” will make it easier for companies to pitch technology for the effort and for the government to monitor supply chain and cyber risks. The program established the hub in April, which Golden Dome Director Gen. Michael Guetlein has called a “one-stop-shop for industry” to do business with one of the Defense Department’s largest programs.

“Our intent is to build a gateway that will provide a single point of entry for anyone that wants to come in and see the Golden Dome problem set and then provide those innovative solutions that perhaps we haven’t even thought about yet that could solve some of our problems,” Marcia Holmes said. Holmes and Guetlein said the hub is meant to be a tool not only for companies looking to pitch solutions, but for the program to understand potential cyber vulnerabilities and supply chain constraints within the industrial base. (5/15)

NASA Still Maintains Some of the Voyager Spacecraft Code in a 1970s-Era Programming Language That Almost Nobody on Earth Fully Understands Anymore, and the Handful of Engineers Who Do Are Now in Their 80s (Source: Space Daily)
The popular story is that NASA still runs the Voyagers on software written in a programming language nobody alive can read, kept going by a handful of engineers all in their eighties, with no one queued up to replace them. In our reading of the record, parts of this are accurate. Parts are not. The underlying problem is real, and more specific than the headline suggests.

The Voyager onboard computers run assembly language written for purpose-built General Electric interrupt-driven processors, designed and fabricated in the early 1970s. Three computer systems sit on each spacecraft: the Computer Command Subsystem, the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem, and the Flight Data Subsystem.

The popular shorthand often says Voyager “runs on Fortran.” That appears to blur two things: onboard flight software and ground-side tools. The spacecraft’s low-level flight work depends on assembly-language programming on highly specialized hardware. Fortran has been associated with ground systems and older mission tooling. When NASA went looking for a replacement engineer in 2015, the brief covered both, but Suzy Dodd’s specific concern in the same coverage was finding people who could program in assembly and understand the intricacies of the spacecraft. (5/16)

Northrop Grumman Expands Florida Aerospace and Defense Manufacturing (Source: Defense Industry Europe)
Northrop Grumman operations across Florida include 17 sites. The company employs ~8,000 people in the state and operates three million square feet of facilities, generating ~$5.4 billion in annual economic output within Florida. The company said it works with nearly 500 suppliers in the state and contributed $1.2 million in charitable support for STEM education, workforce development and military and veteran programs during 2025. According to the company, employees also contributed more than 20,000 volunteer hours across local schools and nonprofit organizations.

The company stated that its operations support both military modernization programs and broader American manufacturing capabilities. At its facility in St. Augustine, Northrop Grumman operates the E-2 production line, which the company described as the longest-running production line in naval aviation history. Design and engineering work for the E-2D platform is carried out at the company’s facility in Melbourne. Florida would serve as a key manufacturing center if Northrop Grumman is selected for the F/A-XX program.

At the Kennedy Space Center, Northrop Grumman supports production and assembly work for the Space Launch System through its Booster Fabrication Facility. In the Orlando region, the company said its Apopka facility is developing advanced microelectronics packaging technologies through its Micro-Line production system. The company stated that the B-21 program originated in Melbourne, Florida, where engineers used digital modeling to integrate design, manufacturing and supplier data. (5/12)