July 28, 2026

ORBES Unveils Exo-ORB Maintenance Spacecraft (Source: Payload)
ORBES, a California startup building robotic spacecraft for in-orbit servicing missions, unveiled its first inspection satellite today—called Exo-ORB. The robotic spacecraft is one of two models ORBES is building: ORB and Exo-ORB.

ORB is a free-flying robot designed to fly inside pressurized space stations, replacing or flying alongside astronauts to perform tasks like inventory management. Exo-ORB is the external alternative, designed to fly 10 m to 20 m away from its host spacecraft to perform up-close inspection on-orbit with a high-res camera. Later iterations of Exo-ORB will come equipped with robotic arms to perform in-space maintenance tasks, such as repairs and component replacements. (7/27)

Astrolight Advances End-to-End Lasercom Network to Address Orbital Bandwidth and Spectrum Bottlenecks (Source: SatNews)
As orbital computing initiatives—such as Google’s Project Suncatcher demonstration and mega-constellation deployments—accelerate data generation in orbit, traditional radio-frequency (RF) communication infrastructure faces severe spectrum congestion and physical throughput limits. o bypass finite RF bandwidth, European space and defense technology firm Astrolight is scaling its integrated optical communications portfolio, deploying flight-ready laser terminals and automated optical ground stations (OGSs) to create an end-to-end optical network for high-capacity space-to-Earth data transfer. (7/27)

Building the Connectivity Backbone for the Next Era of Lunar Exploration (Source: Via Satellite)
Over the last half century, space-based assets have helped to provide terrestrial users with ubiquitous services like broadband communications and position, navigation and timing (PNT). But although we think of these services as space-based, they don’t actually work in space — especially not in the area between Earth orbit and the Moon known as cislunar space, that is the new frontier for Artemis and other missions.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are each pledging billions to kickstart a commercial ecosystem of lunar missions over the coming decade, but the critical foundation for that effort is replicating those taken-for-granted terrestrial services across the vast distances of cislunar space.

Multiple efforts are already underway on both sides of the Atlantic to build lunar satellite constellations, providing PNT and broadband communications for Artemis and other missions, and building out the infrastructure that could service future commercial activity on the Moon, like mining or low gravity manufacturing. (7/27)

Lunar Outpost Europe to Contributes to Moonraker Mission (Source: Lunar Outpost)
Lunar Outpost Europe is contributing to Moonraker, the lunar LiDAR mapping mission being led by NUVIEW GmbH. Selected by ESA for a Phase A study under the Small Missions initiative, Moonraker would generate high-resolution, three-dimensional elevation data of the lunar South Pole to support landing site assessment, hazard identification, and mission planning. The three-dimensional models produced by this mission would provide the most accurate Digital Elevation Maps of the lunar surface to date.

High-fidelity surface maps directly increase the likelihood of successful landing attempts and assist mobility platforms like Lunar Outpost’s MAPP rover and Lunar Terrain Vehicle in efficient traversal planning. Surface data will also provide valuable information to enhance infrastructure like LUX-Thermal, an advanced piece of lunar surface infrastructure designed by Lunar Outpost to protect technologies from the harsh lunar night. (7/27)

Experts Warn Current Starship Heat Shield Tech is a “Dead End” for Rapid Reuse (Source: Ars Technica)
Despite the marked progress with the 13th test flight of Starship, one key issue—probably the key issue when it comes to Starship’s future—remains unresolved. This concerns Starship’s heat shield, the roughly 18,000 ceramic tiles that protect the vehicle’s underbelly during its fiery return through Earth’s atmosphere. And some experts say SpaceX’s current approach may not get Starship to its ultimate goal of flying frequently, at low cost.

“Starship’s current thermal protection system is a dead-end for all missions that require full and rapid reusability,” Dan Rasky, a former NASA engineer. In SpaceX’s drone footage of the landed Starship in the Indian Ocean, there were notable white streaks across the heat shield. All of these appeared to originate at boundaries between tiles, suggesting hot gas may have penetrated these boundaries. There were also indications of cracked tiles and broken edges.

SpaceX is not oblivious to the magnitude of this heat shield challenge, nor blithely whistling past the graveyard. On various podcasts and X social media postings, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has repeatedly stated that solving the reusable heat shield problem is one of the toughest problems the company faces. Back in February Musk expounded on this, saying a reusable heat shield is “the biggest problem that remains” for Starship. “If you want to be able to land it, refill propellant, and fly again, you can’t do this laborious inspection of 40,000 tiles type of thing,” he said. (7/27)

Aliens Might Be Sending Messages We're Not Listening For (Source: Connect Sci)
Astronomers searching for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life may have been missing alien signals in a part of the radio spectrum which has gone relatively unexplored recently, according to a new study. Radio waves are a great way to send messages across the vastness of interstellar space. They are easy to produce, efficient, long-lasting and can pierce through thick cosmic dust and gas.

Looking for tiny signals in a sea of cosmic noise, however, is like looking for an alien needle in a cosmic haystack. So, astronomers used some clever logic to try and narrow the search to a specific range within the radio spectrum. Known as the “water hole”, astronomers target a specific frequency band between 1.42 and 1.66 GHz. This band sits between the natural emission frequencies of hydrogen and hydroxyl – the components of water. (7/26)

Indra Group: Space Division is on Track to Reach $455M in Revenue This Year (Source: Space Intel Report)
Indra Group says its space business—now encompassing satellite fleet operator Hispasat and military satcom provider Hisdesat since January—remains on track to reach €400 million ($455 million) in revenue this year. In the three months ended, revenue declined 6% but the division’s outlook is unchanged. (7/27)

It’s Becoming Clear Why Black Holes Never Run Out of Fuel (Source: WIRED)
A newly published study has brought researchers closer to confirming this idea. An international team led by Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo, a professor at the University of Montreal, observed the central galaxy NGC 4696 in the Centaurus Cluster and demonstrated a connection between such filaments and its central black hole.

NGC 4696 is located about 145 million light-years from Earth. It has been the subject of extensive observation in the past, including the discovery of an S-shaped spiral structure around its central black hole. For this study, the team observed the galaxy's central region for approximately eight hours using the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). The observations achieved a resolution fine enough to distinguish structures only about 30 light-years across.

The observed motion of the gas revealed that the S-shaped spiral is actually a rotating disk of gas orbiting the black hole. The disk is about 800 light-years in diameter, with gas pulled by the black hole's immense gravity rotating at several hundred kilometers per second. A velocity difference of roughly 600 kilometers per second was measured between opposite edges of the disk. The observations also showed that filaments—formed from condensed gas—flow directly into the edge of the disk. The gas travels along these filaments, accumulates in the disk, and is ultimately supplied to the black hole as "fuel." For the first time, this entire pathway has been directly visualized. (7/27)

How Fast Can You Build a Satellite? Inside the Smallsat Manufacturing Market (Source: Via Satellite)
Today, smallsat manufacturing is experiencing an industrial revolution. Manufacturers across the globe are investing billions in state-of-the-art facilities and advanced production techniques to accelerate speed to orbit. Yet, the more they adopt mass-production principles, the more delicate the balance between speed and multi-mission capabilities. It’s “not speed for its own sake,” Millennium Space Systems CEO Tony Gingiss said.

“The challenge is to maximize repeatability while still meeting specific customer requirements. The broader industry is learning the same lesson: the more you can standardize the underlying architecture and production approach, the better positioned you are to move quickly without sacrificing quality."

Accelerating the speed of smallsat delivery is not about adjusting a single variable or a single part of the production line, says Raycho Raychev, CEO of EnduroSat, one of Europe’s fastest-growing space infrastructure companies. “Most people really still believe there is one ‘aha moment’ innovation that will be game changing,” he tells Via Satellite. “We believe in incrementally solving multiple different problems in the engineering, in the operations, in the supply chain. And by tackling all of them, the net effect on the customer is just staggering.” (7/27)

Voyager and Reditus Space Renew Partnership for Commercial Microgravity Access on the 'ENOS' Reentry Vehicle (Source: Spacewatch Global)
Voyager has renewed its partnership with Reditus Space to deliver end-to-end microgravity mission services aboard Reditus’ ENOS reentry vehicle. The renewed deal expands reliable commercial access to microgravity experimentation using a dedicated reentry-vehicle platform for customer missions. (7/27)

Startup Readies for Cubesat Plasma Thruster Tests (Source: Aerospace America)
In the coming months, a cubesat is slated to arrive at the International Space Station equipped with a novel kind of thruster: Unlike today’s liquid- or gas-propelled designs that require fuel tanks, it will rely on plasma. This thruster is the work of JivaJet, a Washington, D.C., startup. For the ISS demo, the thruster will be tested at an altitude of 415 kilometers, but the company’s long-term goal is for its plasma propulsion to enable satellites to operate for extended periods at altitudes below 200 km — dubbed very low-Earth orbit, or VLEO. (7/1)

Private Companies Could Ruin the Night Sky, and International Law Can't Stop Them (Source: Space.com)
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) can single-handedly green-light massive spaceflight projects that could completely change the view of the night sky for the entire world. Despite the outcry these projects have caused, space law experts say there is very little other nations and the international community can do to thwart them if the FCC were to grant them licenses.

On top of Reflect Orbital's plans, companies including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Starcloud are awaiting the FCC's decisions on respective applications to deploy their own massive fleets of orbiting data centers and internet-beaming satellites. If all those projects come to fruition, the view of the night sky could change beyond recognition all over the world. (7/27)

Orbital Construction Pioneers and ExoScientific Launch Interplanetary Regen Network (IRN) (Source: OCP)
Orbital Construction Pioneers, Inc. (OCP) and ExoScientific LLC (ExoSci) announced the formation of the Interplanetary Regen Network (IRN), a multi-party consortium focused on the collaborative development of bioregenerative systems, advanced in-space construction techniques, and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technologies to sustain human presence beyond Earth.

Sustainable long-duration human presence on the Moon, Mars, and in cislunar space requires the integration of closed-loop life support, regenerative habitats, advanced construction methods, and the ability to use local resources. No single organization holds all the necessary expertise. IRN brings complementary capabilities together under a focused, commercially oriented framework designed to accelerate technology maturation, enable joint proposals to government and commercial customers, and create practical, scalable pathways for lunar and Mars settlement that strengthen the New Space economy.

By combining ExoSci’s expertise in marine-derived bioware and closed-loop ecological systems with OCP’s patent-pending orbital fabrication processes and advanced materials, IRN advances integrated life support systems, regenerative habitats, novel composites and structural materials, and technologies optimized for cislunar, lunar, and Mars environments. (7/28)

PA Chamber, Keystone Space Collaborative Form Tri-State Space Council (Source: CPBJ)
The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry and Keystone Space Collaborative have formed an alliance to advance aerospace and space economy in Pennsylvania. The alliance includes the formation of a first-of-its-kind Tri-State Space Council in partnership with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and West Virginia Chamber of Commerce. The affiliation strengthens Pennsylvania’s ability to compete in the growing space economy and advances the commonwealth’s leadership in aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing, research, technology innovation, and commercial space development. (7/16)

Starfighters Space Advances "Wind Tunnel in the Sky" Mach 2+ Flight-Testing Platform (Source: Starfighters Space)
Starfighters Space announced the next phase in development of “Wind Tunnel in the Sky,” a reusable airborne platform designed to help commercial, government, defense, and research customers evaluate advanced technologies during sustained Mach 2+ flight in real-world atmospheric conditions. The underwing platform is modular, reusable, and able to host a variety of sensors, test articles, and other payloads for long-duration exposure to both high-speed and low-gravity conditions.

This underwing platform is expected to support aerodynamic test articles, avionics, sensors, communications systems, electronic equipment, advanced materials, and other technologies for hypersonic programs and microgravity research. A typical 45-minute mission can include up to a 10-minute Mach 2+ test window, providing significantly longer exposure than traditional wind tunnel test runs—which typically can last only seconds at a time—and compressing what could otherwise take days of facility scheduling into a single flight. (7/28)

Sphinx Defense Wins $287 Million From Space Force for SatCom Software (Source: Space News)
Sphinx Defense won a $287 million Space Force contract to develop ground software for the next generation of military satellite communications. The award, announced Monday, covers the mission planning application for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications (ESS) program, a software component that will plan, allocate and manage communications across the future satellite constellation being built by Boeing to replace the current Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) strategic communications system. Sphinx Defense develops software for satellite ground systems, including mission planning, communications scheduling and network optimization. (7/28)

FCC C-Band Move Could Mean Billions for Space Users (Source: Space News)
Satellite operators stand to gain more than $6 billion from the FCC's decision to clear some C-band spectrum for terrestrial applications. SES is in line for about $5.6 billion if it can meet clearing deadlines in 2030 and 2031 so companies can use the band for wireless services. Eutelsat would receive $504 million and Telesat would receive $189 million. The operators would need to move services to the remaining 40 megahertz of upper C-band, or other spectrum such as Ku-band. SES said it expects to spend $2.62 billion to build and launch new satellites as part of the C-band clearing process, while Eutelsat and Telesat said they are assessing if they will need new satellites. (7/28)

Advanced Space Approved for CAPSTONE 02 Cislunar Mission (Source: Space News)
NASA has selected Advanced Space to fly a successor to its CAPSTONE lunar smallsat mission. The CAPSTONE 02 mission, scheduled for launch in 2027, would fly twin 400-kilogram satellites built by Terran Orbital to test rendezvous and proximity operations in cislunar space. The spacecraft would also perform navigation and communications experiments and measure the radiation environment around the moon. NASA said CAPSTONE 02 will be a risk-reduction activity for future Artemis missions where Orion will dock with landers in lunar orbit. NASA last month concluded its use of CAPSTONE, an Advanced Space cubesat launched in 2022 to test the use of the near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon. (7/28)

Exploration Company Seeks $2 Billion Valuation (Source: Financial Times)
The Exploration Company is seeking a $2 billion valuation in its next funding round. The European spacecraft developer, currently working on the Nyx cargo spacecraft, is reportedly working to raise $300 million in a round that could include investment from a new European Commission fund, Scaleup Europe. In addition to Nyx, The Exploration Company is working on a large rocket engine, called Storm, that could be used on a future launch vehicle the company has hinted it will develop. (7/28)

Antares Raises $470 Million for Nuclear Microreactors (Source: Antares)
Antares, a company developing nuclear reactors for military and space applications, raised $470 million. The company announced Monday a Series C round co-led by Paradigm and Caffeinated Capital. Antares is working on small "microreactors" and recently achieved criticality on its first design. The firm is primarily developing reactors for the military but also has proposed using them for in-space applications. (7/28)

Starlab Space Picks SES for Space Station Comms (Source: SES)
Commercial space station developer Starlab Space will use SES satellites for communications services. SES Space and Defense announced Monday it signed an agreement with Starlab Space to provide connectivity for the Starlab space station. SES will provide data relay services through its O3b mPower satellite network in medium Earth orbit. The agreement comes after what the companies called "a comprehensive engineering collaboration" to study performance requirements and model performance using those satellites. Another commercial space station developer, Vast, previously announced it would use SpaceX's Starlink constellation for broadband communications. (7/28)

UKRI to End Funding for Jodrell Bank Observatory (Source: BBC)
Budget cuts could force the closure of a major British radio telescope. The agency that funds the Jodrell Bank Observatory, U.K. Research and Innovation (UKRI), said Monday it would no longer fund the observatory when its current agreement ends in March 2028.  The observatory is home to the 76-meter Lovell Telescope, one of the largest steerable radio telescopes in the world, and UKRI spends about £2.8 million ($3.7 million) on the telescope annually. UKRI said escalating costs of running research facilities required it to make cuts, which also include reductions to other observatories and physics labs. (7/28)

UCF Researchers are Tackling Moon Dust for NASA Lunar Missions (Source: Florida Today)
Shielded by white protective suits and powered air-purifying respirators, four college students dug into dusty, sharp-edged simulated moon soil amid the otherworldly environment of the University of Central Florida's Regolith Bin. This airlock-equipped 10-by-10-meter enclosure at UCF's Exolith Lab serves as a rare space-hardware test bed where researchers can help refine NASA's vision of building humanity's first lunar base near the moon's south pole from ground level. Exolith Lab is helping advance the future of lunar exploration by recreating the Moon's abrasive regolith to test technologies that will support future missions. (7/26)

VLEO Satellites: Global Investment to Near $10 Billion by 2031; Driven by Falling Launch Costs (Source: Juniper Research)
A new study by  Juniper Research found that global investment in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) satellites will reach nearly $10 billion by 2031; rising from $5.2 billion in 2026. This growth of almost 100% will be driven by: 1) Expanding commercial interest in launching next-generation VLEO satellite constellations; 2) Increasing demand for low-latency connectivity and high-resolution Earth observation; and 3) Advances in propulsion, onboard computing, and materials that improve the commercial viability of VLEO missions. (7/28)