June 18, 2026

Can Hong Kong Make a Giant Leap to Commercial Space Insurance? (Source: SCMP)
In many ways, space insurance mirrors maritime insurance. In the early days of commercial space launch, the US turned to Lloyd’s of London – the undisputed king of global maritime insurance. In 1965, Lloyd’s wrote the world’s first space policy: a pre-launch insurance policy for the world’s first commercial communication satellite, Intelsat I, also known as Early Bird. The explosive growth of China’s commercial space business, combined with geopolitical realities, gives Hong Kong a captive market. (6/17)

Gateway Cancel Leads to Tucson Job Cuts (Source: Phoenix Business Journal)
Paragon Space Development Corp. is laying off dozens of employees at its Tucson headquarters in the wake of a Northrop Grumman contract termination for NASA’s Lunar Gateway program. Paragon Space on June 12 filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act with Arizona’s Department of Economic Security stating it will cut 77 jobs at its Tucson facility. (5/17)

NASA Picks Relativity to Develop Mars Mission (Sources: Tech Crunch, Space News)
Relativity Space plans to launch a Mars orbiter mission in 2028 with a NASA instrument suite. The company's Interplanetary Sciences Program is an effort to enable low-cost space science missions, beginning with a Mars orbiter with a radar instrument for studying subsurface ice and geology as well as Aeolus, a set of instruments provided by NASA's Ames Research Center for monitoring the planet's atmosphere. The spacecraft will launch on the company's Terran R rocket that is still in development.

Aeolus, as the mission is dubbed, will contain four instruments to measure and image Mars from orbit, providing what NASA expects to be the first daily, global view of dust, winds, and temperature in its atmosphere. The agency said that data will make it safer for landers and, someday, astronauts, to visit the surface of the Red Planet.

The mission is set to launch in 2028—a rapid pace that will require Relativity to design and build the spacecraft to carry the Aeolus instruments, and finish building the rocket that will carry it to space, all on a tight timeline. NASA did not disclose how much it is paying Relativity for the mission. If Relativity’s Aeolus launches on schedule, it could be the first private mission to reach the Red Planet. (6/18)

Texas Venture Capitalist Dies in Plane Crash (Source: Texas Monthly)
Joshua Baer, the irrepressible and monumentally influential cofounder and CEO of Austin-based start-up incubator/venture capital firm/coworking office Capital Factory, died Tuesday night when a small Austin-bound plane owned by the company NetJets crashed on a highway in Laredo. He was among the major investors in Firefly Aerospace and other aerospace startups. (6/17)

Is SpaceX’s Mars Mission Based On An Unproven—And Dangerous—Premise? (Source: Aviation Week)
The mission of SpaceX and founder Elon Musk is to make humanity multiplanetary by settling a “fully self-sustaining civilization on Mars.” Musk envisions a flotilla of several thousand Starships launching at roughly two-year intervals to transport Martian colonizers to settle the new world. Yet very little public thought or research has addressed the biological, technical and ethical problems of creating a “self-sustaining civilization”—a goal that necessitates reproducing and raising children on a planet that is hostile to all forms of life.

Indeed, SpaceX’s plans to settle more than a million humans on Mars may be based on a faulty premise: that the short-term survival of highly trained astronauts in space proves that humans can live and reproduce on Mars. This load-bearing assumption, if it collapsed, would likely change the calculus for SpaceX investors and for early space settlers motivated by founding a new civilization—some of whom Musk says “will probably die in the beginning.” (6/18)

Paso Robles is One Step Closer to Getting a Spaceport. What’s Next? (Source: The Tribune)
The city of Paso Robles took the next step to making its spaceport a reality Tuesday. According to a city news release, Paso Robles is now looking for proposals to progress its FAA Commercial Spaceport License application to create a horizontal space launch facility at the Paso Robles Municipal Airport. The last time the city discussed the Spaceport and Technology Corridor project was in March after the City Council unanimously directed staff to prepare a request for proposals to receive its licensing. (6/17)

Eutelsat Secures First Order Under French Defense Agreement (Source: Via Satellite)
Eutelsat has won a slew of new deals including an order under an agreement with the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and Veterans, and an agreement for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) services in Angola. Eutelsat signed a capacity contract through the French Directorate General of Armaments (DGA), as part of the Centaure contract, marking the first call-off contract under the 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) NEXUS framework agreement, signed a year ago. (6/16)

U.S. astronaut Christina Koch wins Princess of Asturias Award for Concord (Source: El Pais)
Christina Koch, the first woman to travel to the Moon, has been awarded the 2026 Princess of Asturias Award for Concord. The jury of the prestigious Spanish prize announced its decision on Wednesday, citing the U.S. astronaut’s scientific career and work in space exploration. Koch, one of the four crew members of Artemis 2, the first crewed mission to the Moon in over half a century. Koch holds the longest continuous female record for time spent in space. (6/17)

Space Weather Forecasting: Momentus Secures Commercial Payload Contract for Vigoride-9 OSV (Source: SatNews)
Commercial space transportation provider Momentus Inc. has secured a new contract with the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). Under the agreement, Momentus will integrate and operate LASP’s upcoming Occultation Wave Limb Sounder (OWLS) mission aboard the company’s next-generation Vigoride-9 Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV). The scientific research mission is scheduled to launch into low-Earth orbit (LEO) in 2027. (6/17)

Bezos Earth Fund Invests in FireSat Constellation Build-Out (Source: Via Satellite)
Jeff Bezos’ philanthropic organization the Bezos Earth Fund is joining the investment coalition for the wildfire-monitoring FireSat constellation. Bezos Earth Fund announced a $26 million investment in the non-profit Earth Fire Alliance and its FireSat program on Wednesday. The Earth Fire Alliance is a nonprofit coalition supported by Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and others. This is the largest contribution to Earth Fire Alliance to date, and said to be the largest single philanthropic grant to wildfire detection. (6/17)

Scientists Hail MAVEN's Legacy as NASA Retires Red Planet Orbiter (Source: Space.com)
Following months of unsuccessful recovery efforts, NASA has officially begun decommissioning the MAVEN orbiter, bringing to a close an 11-year mission that transformed scientists' understanding of Mars and became one of the agency's most valuable assets at the Red Planet. For more than a decade, MAVEN circled Mars in a highly elliptical orbit, measuring particles escaping into space and observing how the atmosphere responded to solar activity. Among its most significant findings was evidence that solar storms can dramatically accelerate the loss of atmospheric gases, helping explain how Mars evolved from a potentially habitable world into the cold, barren planet seen today. (6/17)

Quantum Space Picked for DoD Satellite Propellant Transfer Project (Source: Space News)
Quantum Space won a Pentagon contract to develop a spacecraft capable of transferring propellant to satellites in geostationary orbit. The company said Thursday the contract, whose value was not disclosed, covers production of an orbital refueling vehicle using its Ranger platform, a maneuverable spacecraft designed for missions including satellite servicing, space logistics and other operations. The contract is funded by the Department of Defense's Operational Energy Capability Improvement Fund, or OECIF. The spacecraft will be ready for launch in 2028. (6/18)

Blue Origin Begins Launch Complex Re-Build (Source: Space News)
Blue Origin has started to rebuild the New Glenn pad damaged in an explosion last month. Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris on Wednesday, CEO Dave Limp said workers have finished cleaning up debris at Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 36 from a May 28 explosion of a New Glenn rocket during a static-fire test. Reconstruction of the pad started Tuesday, he said, with plans to be ready to resume New Glenn launches there by the end of the year. Neither he nor company founder Jeff Bezos provided details at the conference about what caused the explosion. (6/18)

Ariane 6 Launches 36 Amazon Leo Satellites (Source: Space News)
An upgraded version of the Ariane 6 rocket launched three dozen Amazon Leo satellites Wednesday. The Ariane 64 lifted off at 8:21 a.m. Eastern from Kourou, French Guiana, and successfully deployed 36 Amazon Leo satellites. This was the first launch of the Ariane 64 to use upgraded P160C solid rocket boosters, which increase the vehicle's payload capacity to low Earth orbit by more than two metric tons. That allowed this launch to carry 36 Amazon Leo satellites, versus the 32 on previous launches.

This was the third Ariane 6 launch this year, with Arianespace planning seven to eight missions this year. European Space Agency officials said Wednesday they were studying options to increase the vehicle's launch rate, reviewing scenarios of between 12 to 20 launches a year. That would require significant infrastructure improvements, and ESA expects to decide by the end of this year what increase it would be willing to support. (6/18)

China's Kuaizhou-11 Launch Was a Success (Source: Xinhua)
China says a Kuaizhou-11 launch whose outcome was in doubt was successful. The rocket lifted off Tuesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, but a lack of updates led to speculation the launch had failed. Chinese media reported more than 24 hours after the launch that the rocket successfully deployed a payload of CentiSpace navigation satellites into low Earth orbit, but provided no other details about the launch. (6/18)

France to Use OneWeb for Secure Comms (Source: European Spaceflight)
The French government will use the OneWeb constellation for secure communications. The French defense procurement agency DGA announced a contract this week with Eutelsat worth 138 million euros ($158 million) over four years to use OneWeb for secure communications for the French armed forces. The contract could grow to 350 million euros over eight years. The contract is intended to be a gapfiller until the IRIS² constellation is ready around 2030. (6/18)

Russian Cosmonaut Smokutyaev Passes at 56 (Source: Collect Space)
A Russian cosmonaut who flew on two International Space Station missions has died. Aleksandr Samokutyaev died Wednesday at the age of 56, Roscosmos announced, but did not disclose the cause of his death. Samokutyaev flew on two ISS missions, the first in 2011 and the second in 2014-25, spending a combined 331 days in space. He is the first member of an ISS expedition to pass away. (6/18)

DHS Promotes Latest Space Cybersecurity Research in SPARTA (Source: Via Satellite)
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has revealed details of the latest space cybersecurity research to help protect critical infrastructure. Through the Aerospace SPARTA framework, S&T has published key resources, including Indicators of Behavior, published in April 2025, and Prioritized Countermeasures, published in March 2026. These resources are meant to enable onboard threat detection and provide actionable information for implementing space cybersecurity. (6/17)

ESA Seeks to Increase Ariane and Vega Launch Cadence (Source: Space Intel Report)
The European Space Agency (ESA) is examining ways to increase the launch rates of its Ariane 6 heavy-lift and Vega-C medium-lift rockets to capture what’s almost certain to be a surge in demand starting now and continuing through the end of the decade. Ariane 6, which conducted its eighth straight successful flight on June 17, carrying 36 Amazon Leo satellites into low Earth orbit, launched four times in 2025. Launch service provider Arianespace is targeting 7-8 launches this year as it ramps capacity. (6/17)

The Private Space Race is Spurring a Luxury Hotel Land Grab for Florida Oceanfront Property (Source: CNBC)
The rise of the private space industry, with companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, has spurred demand for commercial real estate on Florida’s space coast. A new $420 million Westin Cocoa Beach Resort & Spa is set to open next year complete with a conference center. Once the Westin opens, Miami-based Driftwood Capital will control about 62% of the beachfront hotel inventory in the region, according to executive chairman Carlos Rodriguez Sr.

Rodriguez says the area is attracting senior corporate leaders and scientists who travel to watch launches and support new facilities. He points to companies such as Amazon establishing operations at the Kennedy Space Center, alongside broader momentum from the U.S. Space Force and increasing commercial interest in space-related ventures. (6/17)

UK's Instinct Space Unveils Plans for Low-Cost Lunar Landers (Source: Payload)
Instinct Space announced a significant pivot today from helping lunar surface missions find their way to getting in on the surface action itself. The London-based startup joined Y Combinator in 2025 with the aim of developing a lunar-orbiting GPS constellation. Now, the company has shifted its vision, unveiling plans to build low-cost lunar landers, which will be capable of reaching the lunar surface from LEO.

Instinct is scheduled to fly its first lunar mission in late 2028, where its dishwasher-sized lunar lander will carry 20 kg of payload to the Moon for about $550,000 per kg. The vehicle will weigh ~650 kg when fully fueled. It will rely on an electric pump-fed engine and four small attitude thrusters, running on a mix of hydrogen peroxide and kerosene, which can provide 6 km/s of Delta-v—enough to bring 20 kg of payload from LEO to the Moon. The same prop system will perform the landing burn on the lunar surface. (6/17)

Tackling the Launch Capability Bottleneck (Source: Space News)
One theme that’s already emerging for the second half of the year? Launch capability. That term doesn’t simply mean finding rockets to take satellites to orbit but also for the United States to have the infrastructure needed to get tens of thousands of new satellites to orbit. There are growing concerns about launch demand straining capacity at both Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral.

Policymakers could be forced to consider “non-traditional” launch sites, including inland and sea-based spaceports, to relieve pressure on the Cape Canaveral Spaceport and Vandenberg Space Force Base. Long viewed as a technically difficult niche with a history of commercial failure, companies and defense officials are giving offshore launch a second look as they search for ways to expand United States launch capacity.

The Commercial Space Federation and Rational Futures report, "SCRUBBED: America’s Launch Capacity Challenge," identifies a critical infrastructure bottleneck as satellite launches are projected to exceed 7,000 annually by the mid-2030s. Current U.S. launch infrastructure and regulatory pipelines are operating at capacity, requiring modernized facilities and streamlined FAA processes to maintain competitive dominance. (6/17)

NASA Seeks Alternative Launcher for Blue Moon Landers (Source: Mach 33)
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman stated publicly on June 5, 2026 that the agency is evaluating alternative launch vehicles for Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 cargo lander after the May 28 explosion of a New Glenn rocket. Speaking at the CNBC CEO Council Summit, Isaacman said that in terms of heavy-lift options, the agency is likely looking at "Falcon Heavy land," per Gizmodo reporting. The Blue Moon Mark 1 uncrewed cargo lander had been contracted to fly on New Glenn as early as fall 2026 to deliver NASA payloads to the lunar surface. (6/11)

Third Time’s the Charm for a Row of Faint Galaxies Without Dark Matter (Source: Yale)
Astronomers have followed a faint, cosmic trail of gas to a third galaxy that has no dark matter. Yale astronomers found a dwarf galaxy located 67 million light-years from Earth — called NGC 1052-DF9 — that appears to have formed in a straight line with nine other galaxies. Two of those other galaxies, DF2 and DF4, were previously shown to lack dark matter — an invisible, theorized material that gives shape to the universe and is thought by most astronomers to be essential to galaxy formation. Now, DF9 has joined the no-dark-matter club. (6/16)

Could Earth Have Sent Life to Jupiter's Moon Europa? (Source: Phys.org)
Zaza Osmanov calculates the chance that dust particles containing living bacteria were ejected from Earth's gravitational well and traveled to Jupiter's icy moon Europa, where they could have landed undestroyed and made their way through cracks in Europa's ice. Osmanov calls this the "reverse panspermia problem" and calculated that "in 5 billion years dust grains can travel in the interstellar medium at distances of the order of hundreds of parsecs."

Also, given the distribution of stars in the Milky Way, "particles emitted by every single planet will reach as many as 105 stellar systems." Moreover, Osmanov found that from a single planet, life can be transported to about a thousand star systems. (6/16)

No More Woke Science Wanted At NASA (Source: NASA Watch)
NASA put out Amendment 59: Several Updates to the ROSES-25 Summary of Solicitation. BOTH of the official documents cited in this notice issued by NASA contain blatantly political rhetoric such as: “This lack of transparency, accountability, and proper oversight became increasingly clear between 2021 and 2024. Federal awards were often used during those years to promote a “woke” policy agenda that did not reflect the values of the vast majority of the American public.” (6/16)

Five Uncrewed Starship Rockets are Projected to Launch Toward Mars During the Brief Window in Late 2026 (Source: Space Daily)
Every 26 months, the orbits of Earth and Mars align in a particular geometric configuration that allows spacecraft to travel between them with the lowest possible fuel expenditure. The window lasts approximately one month. Miss it, and the next opportunity is more than two years away. The next such window opens in November 2026 and closes in December. SpaceX has been preparing for this specific window for years.

Elon Musk has publicly committed to launching up to five uncrewed Starship V3 vehicles toward Mars during the 2026 window, carrying cargo, scientific experiments contracted by the Italian Space Agency, and a small fleet of Optimus humanoid robots built by Tesla. The robots are intended to demonstrate operational capability on the Martian surface — the first robotic ambassadors of a private company on another planet, if the mission succeeds. (6/17)

At Least Two Trillion Galaxies Fill the Observable Universe (Source: Space Daily)
The paper states it plainly. There are “at least 2 × 10¹² (two trillion) galaxies in the currently visible universe, the vast majority of which cannot be observed with present day technology as they are too faint.” In other words, the count is less a tally of dots in our images than an estimate of how many dots the images are missing. The team did not add up galaxies one by one. Instead they used galaxy stellar mass functions, which describe how many galaxies of each mass exist in a given slice of space. They measured these at many points in cosmic history, reaching back to within roughly 650 million years of the Big Bang. (6/16)

SpaceX vs. Blue Origin, Rocket Lab: What The Numbers Show (Source: Trefis)
At least five companies, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and two Chinese state-backed programs, now have reusable hardware flying or about to fly. What’s driving all of them is the same underlying demand: satellite megaconstellations that need thousands of repeat launches over their lifetime, not a single mission. That kind of recurring demand is what turns a one-time technology lead into a market large enough to support several winners at once.

The numbers that matter to an investor are reuse, payload, and cadence, because together they determine how cheaply and how often a company can put mass into orbit. On reuse, SpaceX still leads by a wide margin: it had roughly 400 orbital booster recoveries by April 2026, dwarfing China’s combined total of a few dozen and Blue Origin’s single-digit count. Each successful recovery is effectively a rehearsal that lowers the odds of failure on the next one. That makes this gap also a reliability gap and not just a volume one. It also shows up directly in price.

On payload, which is simply how much mass a rocket can lift to orbit in one flight, Blue Origin’s New Glenn actually beats Falcon 9, though it hasn’t flown nearly often enough to prove that capacity translates into reliable, repeatable service. Rocket Lab’s Neutron sits in a smaller payload class entirely, built for satellites that don’t need a heavy-lift vehicle, and is targeting a launch price of around $50 million once it debuts, a figure roughly in line with what Falcon 9 charges commercial customers today. The gap that matters most right now is cadence. (6/16)

Italy Leads UN COPUOS (Source: Space Economy Institute)
Italy will lead the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) for the 2026–2027 term. An important achievement for the Italian space sector: Teodoro Valente, President of the Italian Space Agency, has been elected to lead one of the world’s key international bodies for space governance.

At a time when space is becoming increasingly strategic for economic growth, scientific progress and international cooperation, COPUOS will play a central role in addressing major challenges such as sustainable space activities, satellite traffic management, orbital debris mitigation and equitable access to space. (6/16)

July 29 GSA Webinar: Building Spaceports for Performance and Growth (Source: GSA)
Join the Global Spaceport Alliance for an engaging discussion led by BRPH’s aerospace and infrastructure experts on the planning, design, and development strategies shaping the next generation of spaceports. As spaceports evolve into hubs for transportation, manufacturing, innovation, and economic growth, successful development requires more than launch infrastructure alone. This webinar will explore how spaceports can be designed to support operational performance, attract aerospace tenants, and scale for future transportation systems. Click here. (6/16)