Commercial Space

The Federal Communications Commission is revoking plans to award SpaceX up to $886 million over 10 years to subsidize broadband internet service to rural households in the U.S. via the Starlink satellite network.

Benchmark Space Systems has signed an agreement to buy Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation’s electric propulsion technologies.

A Russian Soyuz 2.1b rocket has successfully orbited Iran’s Khayyam satellite.

Rocket Lab is planning its second attempt to capture a parachuting first-stage booster soon.

Commercial technology is catching up with military hardware.

Blue Canyon Technologies has opened a new cubesat factory in Boulder, Colorado, that will increase its annual production capacity from 50 to 85 satellites.

Xona Space Systems has received an undisclosed investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures to fund development of a private low Earth orbit global navigation satellite system.

Blue Origin’s sixth crewed New Shepard suborbital mission took off early Aug. 4 from the company’s flight operations center in West Texas.

Momentus’s Vigoride-3 deployed four additional satellites to low Earth orbit in July as the company works through anomalies discovered shortly after launching the space tug in May.

The acquisitions mean Slingshot will be able to offer satellite operators a better understanding of the growing number of objects on orbit and other threats.

NASA is updating requirements for future private astronaut missions to the International Space Station based on some lessons learned from the pioneering 17-day Axiom Space-1 mission to the orbital science lab flown in April.

The first of two Blue Origin BE-4 engines earmarked for the debut flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket arrived at the manufacturer’s West Texas facility on July 31 for acceptance testing.

Industry consolidation in space comms heats up, with Eutelsat capturing OneWeb as Viasat closes in on Inmarsat.

The mission marked the entry of a new rocket manufacturer, CAS Space, into China's space sector.

Deep Space Transport, a new Boeing-Northrop Grumman joint venture, is set to receive the contract.

The merger is set to “accelerate the commercialization of OneWeb’s fleet.”

The mission would be Terran R Launch vehicle’s first flight.

A deal would create a multi-orbit satellite heavyweight.

Relativity Space is “weeks away” from launching its first rocket, the Terran 1.

UK-based horizontal space launch company Astraius has selected Northrop Grumman and Exquadrum to be suppliers for a three-stage rocket system.

Millennium Space Systems says it has demonstrated several new technologies–including new avionics, communications devices, onboard processing of data and radio-frequency crosslinks–with a three-satellite constellation called RED-EYE that showcases the strength of small satellites.

Impulse Space and Relativity Space plan to launch a commercial research and development mission to the surface of Mars as soon as 2024.

With new leadership and an eager private equity sponsor, Tucson, Arizona-based Geost, a provider of small-satellite electro-optical and infrared sensors to the U.S. military, is eyeing acquisitions and investment stakes in other companies.

The upgraded Vega-C, a beefed-up and more flexible version of the Vega light launcher, made its first flight July 13 from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The NASA- and Northrop Grumman-developed observatory is “probably the most significant engineering feat of our time,” Northrop CEO Kathy Warden tells Aviation Week.