Episode Details

Main Topics

Lunar

* NASA awarded $590M in CLPS contracts for 2028 Artemis Missions: two contracts to Astrobotic, one to Firefly, and one to Intuitive Machines. [source]

* NASA announced they will repurpose their spare PROMISE nuclear Mars rover to send to the Moon. [source]

* Lunar Forge came out of stealth targeting a 2027 demonstration of their laser sintering device capable of building structures out of lunar regolith. [source]

* Instinct Space and Polimak announced a partnership to provide access to lunar regolith for payloads that fly on their Moon mission. [source]

Launch

* Katalyst Space’s LINK mission successfully deployed from the Kwajalein Atoll on July 3 and made contact from orbit. [source]

* Amazon Leo launched a batch aboard ULA’s last Atlas 5 carrying satellites, Leo now has enough satellites on orbit to begin operations. [source]

* AST Spacemobile launched 3 more Bluebirds - 8 through 10 - aboard Falcon 9, successfully achieving operational orbits. [source]

* Planet Labs agreed to launch a Pelican satellite onboard ISAR’s Spectrum launch vehicle as early as the end of 2026. [source]

* Southern Launch raised a $25M round led by Brindabella and Company to fund their rockets and spaceports. [source]

* Hongqing, and affiliate of Landspace, raised a $191M round led by the China Construction Bank and ICBC to develop Jinwu-200 satellites for the Honghu-3 communications constellation. [source]

* Nayuta Space announced their intent to use the second stage of their Xuanniao-R rockets as orbital data centers. [source]

* Firefly announced plans to launch Alpha out of Sweden’s Esrange Space Center. [source]

* French rocket company Latitude announced plans to l