August 19, 2026

CACI to Develop Training, Testing Tech for Space Force (Source: Defense Post)
CACI International has been selected by the US Space Force to advance training and testing systems for space operations. The company will provide new technologies and environments to help Space Force Guardians prepare for increasingly complex threats in the space domain. This initiative is part of a larger multi-company contract effort to enhance operational readiness and maintain a technological edge in space. (8/19)

ULA Raises $1.5B to Fuel Growth (Source: Advanced Television)
United Launch Alliance is raising $1.5 billion through private bonds to support expansion and address recent operational challenges, including issues with Vulcan rocket launches. This is a significant increase from the initial plan to raise $500 million. The fundraising comes after a leadership change, with Mark Peller now serving as CEO. (8/18)

Viasat Taps Rocket Lab to Build Small GEO for PTS-G Program (Source: Via Satellite)
Viasat has selected Rocket Lab to build a Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite for its contract on the Protected Tactical Satcom-Global (PTS-G) program. Rocket Lab will deliver a spacecraft based on its Lightning platform to host Viasat’s dual-band X/Ka-band payload. This comes after Viasat received a contract in May to deliver the first of a proliferated fleet of small, maneuverable GEO satellites to provide protected tactical satcom capabilities to the U.S. Space Force. SES received an award as well. (8/18)

USSF to Operate Legacy Weather Sats Until at Least 2028 as It Works on Replacements (Source: Air and Space Forces)
The Space Force will maintain its aging weather satellite fleet—which provides key forecasting data for military planners—until at least 2028 as it transitions to a new replacement architecture. The service had anticipated decommissioning the three remaining Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft this year, but a spokesperson told Air & Space Force Magazine that timeline will stretch to 2028 as the Space Force works to field a new constellation of weather satellites. (8/18)

Intuitive Machines’ $853.3 Million Maxar Deal Gains Credibility From Three-Satellite Order and Orbital Data-Center Potential (Source: Space Intel Report)
Intuitive Machines’ $853.3 million acquisition of Maxar Space Systems remains unproven, but a three-satellite order and potential orbital data-center applications strengthen the strategic rationale. The transaction gives Intuitive Machines exposure to large-satellite manufacturing while adding possible growth beyond its existing space businesses. (8/19)

Rocket Lab to Use Photon for SDN Demo (Source: Space News)
Rocket Lab plans to use one of its Photon spacecraft for an in-orbit demonstration of the U.S. Space Force's Space Data Network (SDN) in 2027. The company was one of five selected by the Space Force last week for a $60 million effort to demonstrate how different commercial satellite systems can connect to the SDN. Rocket Lab said that, under its $12 million contract, it will use a Photon satellite with optical communications and networking hardware to demonstrate interoperability in orbit. Amazon LEO for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and York Space Systems also received $12 million each to conduct similar interoperability tests. (8/19)

Firefly and Zeno Partner on Radioisotope Heating Unit for Blue Ghost (Source: Space News)
Firefly Aerospace and Zeno Power are partnering to test a radioisotope heat source on a lunar lander. The companies announced Wednesday that a Blue Ghost lander Firefly is building for a 2028 mission will carry a "survive the night" package from Zeno Power that includes a five-watt radioisotope heating unit (RHU). That payload is designed to operate for at least five days into the lunar night, sending a signal after those five days to demonstrate it is still operating. RHUs use the heat from the decay of radioactive isotopes, in this case americium-241, to keep payloads or entire spacecraft warm. The mission, the companies said, will also test regulatory processes for the commercial launch of radioisotope payloads. (8/19)

Challenges Ahead for Space Nuclear Projects (Source: Space News)
Space nuclear programs face both near- and long-term challenges. Government and industry officials said that, as programs like NASA's Space Reactor 1 and Lunar Reactor 1 start up, they will have to address issues such as access to suitable fuels, a small workforce trained in both space and nuclear technologies, and limited access to testing facilities. That is complicated by the growth of other nuclear power programs in industry and government. In the longer term, one concern is how NASA's programs will manage the transition to the next administration in 2029. That requires starting work early on follow-on missions and also getting Congress to "own" the program and provide multi-year funding. (8/19)

Vantor Gets New VP (Source: Space News)
Geospatial intelligence company Vantor has named a new head of its U.S. government business. The company announced Wednesday Will Cocos will take over as executive vice president and general manager of the U.S. government business. He had been the company's chief transformation officer since 2023. Susanne Hake, who led Vantor's U.S. government operations since 2023, announced Wednesday that she is leaving the company. The leadership change comes as Vantor, formerly Maxar Intelligence, seeks to expand beyond its traditional business supplying high-resolution satellite imagery to the U.S. government and sell a broader set of software, data and intelligence capabilities. (8/19)

SpaceX Launches Wednesday Starlink Mission From California (Source: Space News)
SpaceX launched a new set of Starlink satellites overnight. A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California Wednesday, placing 24 Starlink satellites into orbit. This was the 97th Falcon 9 launch of the year and the 100th overall for SpaceX, counting Falcon Heavy and Starship flights. (8/19)

Astronauts Remove Broken ISS Antenna (Source: Spaceflight Now)
Spacewalking astronauts removed a broken antenna outside the International Space Station Tuesday but ran out of time to install its replacement. NASA astronaut Anil Menon and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot spent six hours and 23 minutes outside the ISS, working to remove an antenna used for space-to-ground communications. The astronauts ran into problems removing cables and unbolting the antenna, and controllers concluded there was not enough time for them to install its replacement. Another spacewalk is scheduled for next Tuesday, and station managers are studying whether to install the antenna on that spacewalk or proceed with previously planned maintenance tasks. (8/19)

India Prepares for September GSLV Launch (Source: Indian Express)
The Indian space agency ISRO is preparing for its first launch since a failure in January. ISRO is expected to launch in early September the GISAT-1A Earth observation satellite on a GSLV rocket. The launch will be the first by ISRO since a PSLV launch in January failed because of a problem with the rocket's third stage, the second consecutive failure of that rocket. ISRO has not disclosed many details about either PSLV failure. (8/19)

LRO Images Rocket Crater on Moon (Source: AP)
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured images of the crater created by the impact of a Falcon 9 upper stage. The LRO images, released Wednesday, showed a crater about 18 meters across and no more than 3 meters deep overlapping an older crater. The new crater was created when the upper stage, from the launch last year of two lunar lander missions, hit the moon Aug. 5 at about 8,700 kilometers per hour. (8/19)

LEO Human Spaceflight - Riches to Rags? (Source: Phil McAlister)
In many ways, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches to be involved in the U.S. low-Earth orbit (LEO) human spaceflight industry these days. The SpaceX Dragon/Falcon 9 human space transportation system has been certified by NASA and has safely flown nine missions to LEO carrying 34 people to date. Boeing’s Starliner/Atlas 5 system is targeted to fly a Crewed Test Flight this summer and, if all goes well, NASA could certify that system soon after that. When that happens, the U.S. will have two, independent commercial LEO human space transportation systems, something no other country in history has ever had – ever, ever, ever.

Those two systems will be able fly a lot of missions and a lot of people. But we just need to look ahead a short time to see how fragile this situation is. Given the current trajectory of the U.S. LEO human spaceflight industry, the number of certified transportation systems will soon be zero. NASA certifies the Dragon/Falcon 9 system and the Starliner/Atlas 5 system. And, to date, NASA has only certified those systems for the ISS crew transportation mission (Boeing’s certification is not yet complete).

Once the Atlas 5s are gone and if Boeing wants to keep flying the Starliner for NASA human missions (which I sincerely hope they do), then it will need a new certification, one that covers the Starliner and a new launch vehicle. And SpaceX is developing Starship. SpaceX has said publicly that they will continue to fly the Dragon/Falcon 9 system as long as there is market demand (which I sincerely hope they will do). But, even then, the Dragon/Falcon 9 system is currently only certified for the ISS mission and the ISS will be retired in 2030. Editor's Note: I was struck by how little has changed on this topic since it was published in 2023. (5/10/23)

Brain Organoid Studies on the ISS Move Closer to New Treatments (Source: Upward)
Research using human brain organoids onboard the International Space Station helped lead to the clinical trial of a potential therapy for Rett syndrome, a debilitating neurological disorder in children. Scientists are now expanding the space-based approach to study other brain diseases to find new treatments. (8/19)

China's Landspace Becomes First Non-US Company to Land Booster on Legs (Sources: Space News, Douglas Messier)
Landspace successfully recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket Tuesday, becoming the third entity, after SpaceX and Blue Origin, to land an orbital booster on legs. The successful landing is China’s second booster recovery, coming just a month after China caught a Long March 10B orbital booster using a drone vessel at sea equipped with a net-capture system.

Zhuque-3 is a two-stage rocket that is 65.9 meters tall. It is powered liquid oxygen and liquid methane. Zhuque-3 can place 11,800 kg into low Earth orbit (LEO) in its expendable form or 8,000 kg into LEO when the first stage is recovered. Approximately 137 seconds after liftoff, the first and second stages separated, and the second stage continued its flight, accurately sending the Honghu 03 satellite, independently developed by Hongqing Technology, into its predetermined orbit. (8/18)

RFA is now RF (Source: Rocket Factory)
German launch provider Rocket Factory Augsberg (RFA) has rebranded itself and is now simply Rocket Factory (RF). "What started with a small team and a shared interest in rocketry has grown into a journey of designing, building, testing and learning through every challenge we face. This rebrand marks the beginning of a new chapter for us." (8/16)

Space Forge to Collaborate with Texas A&M University System (Source: Space Forge )
Space Forge Inc, the US subsidiary of the UK company using space to produce semiconductor materials, has signed an agreement with The Texas A&M University System, for a research collaboration. It marks a first step towards Space Forge establishing its initial semiconductor materials manufacturing and processing capability in the US.

The Texas A&M System was selected for the strength of its existing semiconductor facilities and infrastructure, including cleanrooms, material processing and characterization capabilities, alongside aligned research, access to a skilled local workforce and the major semiconductor projects planned across the region. (8/17)

Astra Space Seeks $250 Million to Revive its Launch Programs (Source: American Bazaar)
is seeking investors for reviving its launch programs and to expand its satellite propulsion operations. The company is seeking to raise $250 million, based on a company’s valuation of $1 billion with the deal expected to be completed by the third quarter this year. Astra Space CEO Chris Kemp said that the company is looking to rebound from years of financial struggles. Astra is now betting on low-cost expendable launch vehicles that could be used by militaries to launch satellites from dispersed locations.

Editor's Note: Astra has been working at Launch Complex 46 on the Cape Canaveral Spaceport toward a December 2026 debut "Rocket 4" mission. Rocket 4 is 18.9 meters long with a 1.8 meter diameter. The company is developing a portable launch capability similar to Rocket Lab's GHOST deployable system for Electron/HASTE missions. (8/17)

Sophie Adenot Becomes First Frenchwoman to Spacewalk (Source: LeMonde)
Sophie Adenot became the first French female astronaut to venture outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk on Tuesday, August 18, accompanied by American astronaut Anil Menon. During the six-and-a-half-hour mission, the two astronauts were to replace an antenna that allows the ISS to communicate with mission control in Houston, according to NASA. The two space travelers could be heard chatting and laughing in NASA footage of their adventure. (8/18)

SpaceX Reverses Starlink Roaming Restrictions for Polish Customers After Payment Dispute (Source: European Spaceflight)
SpaceX has reversed its decision to restrict Starlink roaming for customers in Poland, resolving a dispute that included an official threatening to reconsider $50 million in annual payments. The reversal underscores the commercial and policy sensitivities surrounding satellite broadband service access in national markets. (8/18)

NASA Reworks Voyager Power Systems To Extend Interstellar Mission Into the Early 2030s (Source: New York Times)
NASA engineers are reworking the power systems aboard the nearly 50-year-old Voyager spacecraft to conserve energy and keep both probes operating in interstellar space. The changes could extend the mission into the early 2030s, preserving an unprecedented source of long-duration data beyond the solar system. (8/18)

The Pentagon Wants Thousands of Missile Interceptors in Orbit (Source: Scientific American)
Somewhere in the world, a missile’s engines ignite, and it lifts toward the sky. Somewhere above the world, satellites sense its launch. They, in turn, send out an alert, along with information about the missile’s path. Almost instantly an interceptor in orbit—essentially a big bullet—gets its own message: fire toward the missile. Ideally the space-based weapon strikes the missile early in flight, before the rocket can release a warhead or decoys, turning a threat to the U.S. into a bunch of debris. Or at least that’s the idea behind space-based interceptors, the most audacious part of President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile-defense initiative to shield the U.S. from airborne attacks.

Much of the technology that could feed into Golden Dome already exists in pieces or inside other defense programs—it just (“just”) needs to be linked together and scaled until it can protect the entire country around the clock. Space-based interceptors, though, don’t yet exist as an operational system. And there isn’t a firm plan for what they will look like—or, for that matter, what Golden Dome as a whole will look like. As Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, puts it, “There is no architecture,” at least not one that’s been released publicly. That fuzziness, however, isn’t stopping American companies from preparing to make orbital interceptors in the hopes of cashing in on the most speculative and, by some accounts, expensive part of the defense project. (8/18)

Japan Launches Second US Military Payload to Monitor Space Above Indo-Pacific (Source: Breaking Defense)
Japan has launched the second of two long-planned US Space Force orbital neighborhood watch sensors on a Japanese satellite. The dual missions represent “the first bilateral” US-Japan cooperative space effort “focused on national security,” US Space Systems Command (SSC) said in an Aug. 14 statement. The first of the two sensors was launched in February 2025. The Space Force sensors, designed and built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, will keep watch on the heavens above the Indo-Pacific region. (8/17)

A 'River' of Cosmic Gas 1 Trillion Miles Long Sent Planets in the Orion Constellation Into Tilted Orbits (Source: Space.com)
A rare planet-forming disk around a young triple-star system in the Orion constellation has been tipped over by a river of gas over 1 trillion miles (1.6 trillion kilometers) long. The discovery, made at radio wavelengths with ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile, could explain why astronomers keep finding planets with orbits that are drastically misaligned with the rotational axes of their stars.

GW Orionis is a triple system consisting of three pre-main sequence stars, meaning that they are still forming and contracting and have not yet initiated fusion reactions of hydrogen in their core. The stars are located roughly 1,300 light-years away, in the Lambda Orionis star-forming molecular ring in the constellation of Orion, the Hunter. Finding a planet-forming disk of gas and dust encircling all three stars in a system is very rare, and finding a disk consisting of three rings with misaligned orbits is even stranger. (8/17)

Wishing for Rockets (Source: Space Review)
The demand for launch services is higher than ever, but the supply of rockets today is very constrained. Jeff Foust reports on the various factors that make getting a ride to orbit today difficult and expensive, despite the promise of plummeting launch costs. Click here. (8/18)
 
Two Futures on the Moon (Source: Space Review)
The race to return humans to the Moon pits not just two countries but two political philosophies. Alexander William Salter discusses how American leadership in space can establish a humane space agenda. Click here. (8/18)
 
Colonizing Antarctica and Other Anti-Space Fables (Source: Space Review)
One argument that critics of space settlement make is that it would be far easier to settle Antarctica. Milan Ćirković offers several reasons why that argument is wrong. Click here. (8/18)

Rocket Lab Selected to Build Viasat Satellite Bus (Source: Tech Times)
Rocket Lab has expanded its strategic presence in geostationary orbit by serving as a satellite bus supplier for Viasat’s U.S. Space Force anti-jam communications mission under the PTS-G Swarm 1 program. Unlike its earlier role as prime contractor for the Heimdall GEO domain awareness mission, Rocket Lab now supports Viasat as a specialist platform provider, delivering the Lightning-GEO bus while Viasat manages integration, launch and operations. (8/17)

Using Starlink’s Satellites To Study Earth’s Upper Atmosphere (Source: Hackaday)
Aside from global access to cat videos, the presence of thousands of Starlink broadband internet access satellites in LEO has a very pleasant side effect for atmospheric researchers. Starlink publicly publishes near-real-time ephemeris data on its individual satellites. From this data you can deduce many details about the atmosphere at that altitude, including its density at specific altitudes at specific times, information which otherwise would be very hard to gather. Recently, this allowed [Mamoru Yamamoto] to determine the density of the thermosphere using tomography. (8/17)

How an Ancient Collision with Another Galaxy Transformed the Milky Way (Source: Space.com)
The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered evidence that our galaxy experienced a significant collision and merger with a dwarf galaxy 11.8 billion years ago. In recent years, one other significant merger has come to light, which is a collision with a galaxy referred to as the Gaia–Sausage–Enceladus (GSE) galaxy about 10 billion years ago. The GSE had its own family of globular star clusters that became integrated with the Milky Way's own globular clusters during the collision. (8/17)

Most Major Aerospace Suppliers Are Raising Their Outlooks (Source: Aviation Week)
Business is so good in aerospace and defense manufacturing that even troubled companies are making money. Take Honeywell Aerospace, which spun off as a stand-alone company June 29—just in time to have to report second-quarter financial results. (8/18)