June 28, 2026

PLD Space strengthens its Board of Directors (Source: PLD Space)
Hilario Albarracín, former Chairman of KPMG in Spain, will bring his expertise in financial strategy and corporate governance as an independent board member of the company. With this second appointment, PLD Space consolidates a Board of Directors designed to lead its global growth and demonstrates the company’s ability to attract top-tier talent. (6/22)

Indian Scientist Decry Needless Secrecy Over PSLV Failures (Source: New Indian Express)
The Ministry of Science and Technology’s refusal to publicly share the Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) report on the back-to-back PSLV-C61 and C62 mission failures has sparked concern among space scientists and private industry players. Union Minister Jitendra Singh recently said the report was out and anomalies were detected, but that they cannot share it on a public platform. Singh also acknowledged that experts were working on resolving it. But scientists said such secrecy is counterproductive at a time when the government is actively seeking private sector participation in India’s space program. (6/27)

Large, Harmless Asteroid Zips Past Earth (Source: AP)
A large asteroid will zip past Earth this weekend, but don’t worry: It poses no danger. The space rock — 1997 NC1 — makes its closest approach Saturday morning, coming within 1.6 million miles, according to the European Space Agency. Discovered nearly three decades ago by an asteroid-tracking system in Hawaii, the asteroid is between 2,461 feet (0.75 kilometer) to 5,413 feet (1.65 kilometers) wide — roughly the size of two to four Empire State Buildings. (6/26)

Inside Texas A&M's Centrifuge: Simulating Gravity on the Moon and Mars (Source: Houston Chronicle)
The Texas A&M centrifuge was previously owned by NASA. It was built during the agency’s Constellation Program and put into storage after that program was cancelled.It was later transferred to Texas A&M. KBR has a contract with Texas A&M to operate the 4,000-pound centrifuge and provide new displays and instrumentation systems. Texas A&M is using the centrifuge to better understand how the human body responds to low-gravity environments such as those on the moon and Mars, where NASA wants to send its astronauts. (6/28)

Greece Sets Out Space Strategy (Source: Protothema)
Greece’s ambition to become a serious player in space technology gained a human face this week, as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chaired a meeting on the country’s first planned astronaut mission to the International Space Station, alongside the launch of a new €350 million national space program. (6/26)

Report Calls For US Leadership In Space Traffic Coordination As Orbital Congestion Accelerates (Source: Hoover Institution)
A new Hoover Institution report argues that the United States must take proactive steps to enhance space traffic coordination as rapid growth in satellite launches, combined with a lack of standardized international regulations and data sharing practices, increases pressure on the orbital environment and creates significant risks for orbital safety. (6/26)

Shetland Spaceport Plans to Dump 'Huge' Rocket Parts Into Sea (Source: The National)
Scotland's first spaceport on Shetland plans to use the sea as a “dustbin” to dump tonnes of debris from rockets, prompting claims it could endanger tourism and fishing. SaxaVord Spaceport in the island of Unst is applying for a license to start dropping large, disused rocket components into the sea north of Shetland over the next 12 months. The application reveals that there is a “significant risk” that the debris could hit tourist and fishing boats, posing a threat to life.

The Shetland tourism industry, however, flatly rejects the spaceport’s plans and warns that sea ­dumping could be “devastating” for some ­island businesses.  A report by the German company Rocket Factory Augsburg, which is planning the first launch from ­SaxaVord later this year, makes clear that discarded rocket parts will not be recovered from the sea. (6/28)

Lockheed Martin Outlines GPS III, GPS IIIF and Puantum Navigation Approach for Resilient, Precise Positioning in Contested Environments (Source: Defense Industry Europe)
Lockheed Martin has outlined how GPS and quantum navigation could work together to provide resilient and ultra-precise positioning. The company said the Global Positioning System constellation remains a backbone of modern navigation, supporting civilian users and critical defense operations. The company said its GPS III satellites and upcoming GPS IIIF spacecraft are designed around environmental, operational and signal resilience.

These features are intended to help maintain navigation capabilities in difficult physical, military and electronic environments. Lockheed Martin said GPS III and GPS IIIF satellites are engineered to survive hurricane-force conditions, severe space weather events and high-radiation environments. The satellites are also hardened against cyberattacks, kinetic threats and the extreme effects of nuclear detonations. (6/27)

SpaceX, Charter Discuss Mobile Phone Partnership in US (Source: Reuters)
SpaceX and internet ​provider Charter Communications have held ‌executive-level talks about partnering on a consumer mobile phone offering in the United ​States. Charter ⁠could run some of SpaceX's phone traffic through its ground-based internet infrastructure, the report said. (6/26)

SDA Cuts 11 Satellites From Low-Earth Orbit Demo to Focus on Operational Work (Source: Air and Space Forces)
The Space Development Agency last year quietly canceled plans to launch 11 satellites meant to conduct communications experiments in low-Earth orbit, Air & Space Forces Magazine has learned. The agency made the decision to “descope” the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System late last year, according to an SDA official, as a deliberate move to focus on operationalizing its first satellites.

While the plan had been to launch the remaining 11 T1DES satellites this year, the agency opted to cut the program short and instead apply lessons learned from that single satellite to future missions. While cost was a factor in that decision, the official said Dragoon’s success and the need to focus on SDA’s operational objectives were the primary drivers for scaling back the demonstration effort. (6/25)

Rocket Lab Gets Major Stock Upgrade (Source: Insider Monkey)
With market capitalization of $62.08 billion, Rocket Lab Corporation (NASDAQ:RKLB) is among the 10 Stocks That Could Double Over the Next 2 Years. On June 14, KeyBanc upgraded Rocket Lab Corporation (NASDAQ:RKLB) to Overweight from Sector Weight and assigned a $135 price target, citing what it views as attractive opportunities emerging across the commercial space industry. (6/25)

NASA, US Small Business Administration to Announce Partnership (Source: NASA)
NASA and the U.S. Small Business Administration will sign a memorandum of agreement during a ceremony Monday, June 29, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The agreement will create a new interagency initiative that directly responds to President Donald Trump’s National Space Policy and supports the growth of the American space economy. (6/25)

Hiring for Jobs in the Space Economy is Hot (Source: CNBC)
The space economy is growing domestically and around the globe, at an annual rate of 9%, according to the World Economic Forum. In the U.S., gross output in the space economy increased by nearly $51.5 billion from 2012 to 2023. The sector’s total value reached an all-time high of $613 billion in Q2 2025, according to the Space Foundation.

As the space economy grows, it is spurring national job creation. In the private sector alone, over 373,000 employees work space-sector jobs, according to the most recent estimates from the Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis. That remains a small fraction of the total U.S. private-sector workforce, but one that is growing rapidly. Space-sector employment increased by 27% in the decade through 2024, far outpacing total private-sector employment growth at 14%, and with its rate of growth accelerating in the more recent years. From 2019 to 2024 alone, the space economy’s job market grew by 18%.

Young workers in particular have played a major role in this growth. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly half of the new jobs being added to the space economy are filled by workers under the age of 35, accounting for a 3% total increase in young workers’ share of its workforce from 2014 to 2024. Across most major lines of work in the space sector, there has been an increase in the share of young workers employed. (6/27)

China Plans to Double the Size of its Tiangong Space Station While the ISS Nears its End (Source: Space.com)
China is set to expand its space station from three to six modules in the coming years and add a co-orbiting Hubble-class space observatory, even as the International Space Station approaches the end of its lifetime. The three-module, T-shaped Tiangong space station was assembled in orbit across 2021 and 2022 and has hosted numerous three-astronaut Shenzhou crews, but China is now set to expand the orbital outpost with new modules, citing growing research demands and more frequent crew and cargo missions.

The planned expansion will see Tiangong grow into a "double-T" shape, with the addition of the multipurpose module and two new experiment modules, and allow China to extend the scale of operations aboard the station. Additional docking ports on the new modules will allow Tiangong to welcome more spacecraft and provide greater operational flexibility when needed. (6/26)

Finland's ReOrbit Secures Finnish Funding for ‘OrbitCloud’ R&D Program (Source: Via Satellite)
ReOrbit is launching a new OrbitCloud R&D program to create a space-based edge computing network, with initial funding from Business Finland of 4.6 million euro ($5.3 million). The company describes OrbitCloud as “a private satellite network providing direct-to-device connectivity for drones and mobile devices, uniquely combined with orbital AI inference for fast intelligence.”

The total value of the program is projected to exceed 40 million euro ($46 million). ReOrbit described an architecture to deliver real-time intelligence to drones and mobile devices, by integrating D2D with orbital AI, and inter-satellite links. (6/26)

Boeing’s Starliner Is Such a Disaster That We Don’t Even Have Words (Source: Futurism)
Boeing’s Starliner, originally intended to serve as an alternative to SpaceX’s workhorse Dragon spacecraft, has been nothing short of a disaster. It’s been just over two years since the spacecraft launched to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams on board, a maiden crewed voyage following years of delays and major technical setbacks.

But thanks to persistent issues with the thrusters and major helium leaks, the capsule stranded the duo in space for nine months, and eventually returned without anybody on board. Since then, Boeing has continued to struggle to get its act together — over a decade and a half after it struck up its Commercial Crew Program contract with NASA. The long-awaited follow-up to the calamitous test flight — which won’t even have a crew on board — still doesn’t have an official launch date and could be as far as a year away.

The clock is ticking. The ISS will be retired in a matter of four years, which could make the spacecraft obsolete after spending well over $2 billion on it and failing to ever successfully send astronauts to space and back on the type of round trips it was designed for. The news comes roughly four months after NASA released a Program Investigation Team (PIT) report, classifying Wilmore and Williams’ harrowing journey as a “Type A mishap,” a classification that indicates “property damage equal to or greater than $2 million or more.” (6/27)

Rocket Lab Launches Another Japanese Earth-Observing Radar Satellite (Source: Space.com)
An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex-1 (LC-1) in New Zealand today (June 26). The "Ten Owl of Ten" mission sent up Synspective's 10th synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite, which will expand the company's network above Japan to provide imaging data for use in city planning, monitoring infrastructure and responding to natural disasters. (6/26)

Space Force Backs Autonomous Factories to Speed Rocket, Missile Parts Production (Source: Interesting Engineering)
The U.S. Space Force has awarded California-based Orbital Composites a $1.9 million contract to advance AI-driven manufacturing of heat-resistant components used in rockets, hypersonic vehicles, missile defense systems, and nuclear reactors. The funding comes through SpaceWERX’s Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) program and will support development of the company’s robotic additive manufacturing platform for producing extreme-environment materials. (6/26)

LEO 'Crash Clock' Tightens to 5.5 Days (Source: Space Daily)
In a recent study titled An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions, researchers propose a metric they call the CRASH Clock. The name stands for Collision Realization And Significant Harm, and the idea is simple enough to be unsettling: estimate how long it would take for a potentially catastrophic orbital collision to occur if satellites could no longer dodge one another, or if operators lost the situational awareness needed to know where objects would be.

The finding is worth taking seriously, but it should not be read as the final word. This is a preprint, not a peer-reviewed consensus statement. It is also a model of a stressed scenario, not a prediction that a collision is due in ordinary operations. But the comparison at the heart of the paper is stark. The authors calculate that, in 2018, the CRASH Clock stood at 164 days. By their current estimate, after the rapid growth of megaconstellations, it had fallen to 5.5 days. (6/27)

Musk's SpaceXAI to Invest Hundreds of Millions to Expand 'Colossus' in Memphis (Source: Biz Journals)
SpaceXAI's 'Colossus' data center in Tennessee, became operational in July 2024. Its primary purpose is to train the Grok AI, while also providing computing support to X and SpaceX. The company has purchased a third building in Memphis, expanding Colossus to a planned 2 gigawatts of total capacity, housing 555,000 NVIDIA GPUs purchased for approximately $18 billion — making it the world's largest single-site AI training installation.

The site was chosen because the abandoned Electrolux factory could be repurposed to expedite construction. SpaceXAI brought in up to 35 gas turbines to generate a combined 422 MW to power 'Colossus', drawing criticism for their large NOx emissions. Data center cooling is a major constraint at this scale, so SpaceXAI planned an $80 million wastewater treatment project in October, but the project stalled. Following a meeting between Memphis Mayor Paul Young, SpaceXAI committed to resuming construction on the wastewater treatment facility. (6/27)