Episode Details

Major News

Space Sovereignty

* Loft Orbital wins €50M SAR contract from French space agency CNES to be prime contractor for DESIR SAR satellite with Thales and Tekever to deploy in early 2029. This project is part of France’s Defense Procurement Agency’s efforts to secure sovereign national radar imaging. [source]

* Marble Imaging entered a strategic partnership with French aerospace and technology company Safran Space to use their high-performance optical payloads, Seeing230, in Marble’s upcoming satellite constellation for daily collection of high resolution multispectral imaging. [source]

* First two Open Cosmos satellites planned to launch on Rocket Lab Electron on January 22 following their Ka-band spectrum licensing last week that Lichtenstein transferred from Rivada Space. [source]

* SpaceRISE consortium consisting of almost every European prime, but primarily SES, Eutelsat, and Hispasat, initiates procurement for IRIS2 satellite and launch services to deploy sovereign military communication constellation. [source]

* ESA member states have pledged €73 million towards further development of Swissto12’s HummingSat, a smallsat for GEO communications. The funding will accelerate the deployment and readiness of the platform to meet a growing demand for commercial and sovereign communications. [source]

Space Infrastructure

* Blue Origin announces Terawave, a hybrid LEO/MEO communications constellation consisting of 5,408 optically interconnected satellites enabling ultra-high-throughput (projected 6Tbps) links between global hubs and distributed user connections on the ground; planned for launch in Q4 2027. [source]

* Italian space logistics specialist D-Orbit has raised $128 million in the first closing of a Series D investment round to enable strategic acquisitions, accelerate the build-out of D-Orbit’s orbital logistics infrastructure, expand in-orbit transportation services, scale industrial capacity for ION missions and advance new operational capabilities. [source]

* United States Space Force awards $52.5M contract to Starfish Space to deorbit satellites in the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture constellation when the sats reach their expiration date. [source]

* Atomic-6 signs a new development agreement with Starpath to continue joint work on a deployable composite boom for vertical deployable solar array system for the moon. [source]

* NASA and the Department of Energy have partnered to develop nuclear reactors for the moon and prepare to release request-for-proposals from commercial industry. [

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