Episode Details

Major News

Earth Observation

* Array Labs raises $20M Series A to scale production of radar satellites for 3D Earth mapping. The startup aims to mass-produce radar hardware and deploy formation-flying satellites. They’re making great progress out of Palo Alto on proprietary SAR capabilities, formation-flying, and 3D SAR mapping technology. [source]

* Japan’s Ministry of Defense selected seven Japanese companies via public tender for a satellite constellation project intended to ensure stable acquisition of imagery supporting stand-off defense capabilities.The companies listed include SKY Perfect JSAT, Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsui & Co., Synspective, IQPS, Axelspace, and Mitsui Bussan Aerospace. The contract is valued at roughly 282 Bn Yen (~ $1.8 Bn) and is expected to run through 2031. [source]

* Eartheye Space announced a contract to supply satellite imagery to an undisclosed Asia-Pacific customer, citing access to hundreds of satellites with resolution “as sharp as” 15 cm. The company brokers and integrates satellite access via partners for tasking and delivery. They do not manufacture or own any satellites themselves. One can expect this ‘secondary’ market for satellite capacity to grow and develop quickly as customer needs catch up to current inventory’s capacity and capability. [source]

* Satellogic announced a seven-figure ‘continuous site monitoring’ agreement with a strategic customer. This award comes off the back of 8 figures of awards throughout 2025 that focus on explicitly providing low-latency imagery and data insights to customers. They’re solving what amounted to the key problem that government representatives expressed at GeoInt 2025. Continuous / persistent monitoring at low latency is one of Earth Observation’s - and National Security’s - white whales, so it will be interesting to see how close to realtime that imagery delivery is and who their customer winds up being. [source]

Space Infrastructure

* NASA has decided to bring home early four members of the International Space Station Crew-11 because of a medical issue with one of them, a first for NASA. The 4 member crew of the mission will be returning to Earth in the coming days. Once they depart, there will only be three people on the International Space Station, which will affect the station’s operations. The three include the two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut from an earlier Soyuz mission. A new SpaceX crew isn’t slated to launch until February to help keep the massive orbiting lab running. [source]

* Starlink performed 148,696 avoidance maneuvers between June and November 2025. The FCC approved a second tranche of 7,500 Starlink Gen2 satellites Jan. 9, expanding the size of SpaceX’s authorized next-generation constellation which will magnify the need for active collision avoidance in LEO. [source]

* United Semiconductors is collaborating with Aegis Aerospace Inc. on a new in-space manufacturing facility to produce essential semiconductor materials. [