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Welcome, and thanks for joining us this week! Updates in commercial space, governance and defense and some stunning images. Having trouble with links? Click the link below to read the unclipped publication. ↓

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27 October, 2026

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has found a possible dwarf planet beyond Neptune that its discoverers say may be among the largest such candidates known. If confirmed, it would join the five recognized by the International Astronomical Union: Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. Designated 2026 ED138, it is estimated at 600 to 1,500 kilometers wide, large enough that an icy body should be round. Infrared observations are needed to confirm its size and status.

Matthew Holman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found it Oct. 13 running Rubin data through a search code he built with Kevin Napier. Rubin observed it 30 times between March and July, and archival Dark Energy Camera images extend its track back to 2016. It lies about 46 times Earth’s distance from the sun, beyond Pluto’s average of 40. Its orbit, tilted about 25 degrees, makes it a “hot classical” object, a group thought to have been knocked off course by Neptune’s gravity. It likely went unnoticed against the crowded Milky Way, researchers said.

27 October, 2026

NASA has committed to launching UVEX, an ultraviolet telescope that Caltech says would make the first deep maps of the entire sky in ultraviolet light, by January 2031 at a lifecycle cost of $590 million. The approval, after a review called Key Decision Point C, lets the Caltech-led team begin building. Selected in 2024 as a medium-class Explorer, UVEX is meant to show how stars and galaxies evolve. It will be up to 100 times more sensitive than GALEX, which mapped the ultraviolet sky from 2003 to 2013.

NASA said it will work with wide surveys such as the Roman Space Telescope to build a map of the universe across wavelengths. It joins sky-scanning efforts including SPHEREx, the Rubin Observatory and the Zwicky Transient Facility. UVEX will also be able to turn within hours of gravitational-wave alerts to capture explosions such as neutron-star collisions. One such collision, detected in 2017 by the LIGO and Virgo observatories, produced gold and other heavy elements. Hubble has some ultraviolet capability but “cannot rapidly pivot to observe real-time events,” said Caltech astronomer Mansi Kasliwal.

Principal investigator Fiona Harrison said UVEX is optimized to find millions of small nearby galaxies that are hard to distinguish in visible light. UC Berkeley manages the mission, Northrop Grumman will build the spacecraft, and JPL will supply detector technology adapted from smartphone-camera sensors invented there. Caltech calls it the first major ultraviolet space mission in two decades.

30 October, 2026

India launched a navigation satellite Oct. 30 to shore up NavIC, its homegrown alternative to GPS, which needs four working satellites to provide positioning and timing but has only three. NavIC covers India and about 1,500 kilometers beyond. ISRO began work on it in 1999, after the Kargil war, when Indian forces could not use the U.S.-owned GPS. A GSLV Mark II rocket placed NVS-03 into transfer orbit, ISRO said. The satellite carries indigenous Atomic clock, along with the procured Atomic clocks. The rocket has succeeded on 12 of its 14 flights, including six in a row since 2021, the latest of which launched the EOS-05 Earth-observation satellite in September. Six of the 11 satellites launched since 2013 for the roughly 22.5 billion-rupee ($237 million) system have failed, mostly from faulty imported atomic clocks.

A fully working NavIC would support government plans to track about 12,000 trains in real time. The launch was delayed by ISRO’s caution after consecutive PSLV failures in May 2025 and January 2026, which also pushed the first uncrewed test of Gaganyaan, India’s human spaceflight program, to late 2026 or early 2027. A minister said in 2025 that NVS-04 and NVS-05 would follow NVS-03 at six-month intervals.

26 October, 2026

NASA is overhauling how it picks science missions to cut years of proposal work, aiming to judge ideas on science first and fly more missions faster and cheaper, science chief Nicky Fox wrote in an Oct. 21 letter. She said the current two-step process has brought contract management problems, unpredictability and too little funding. Under Competition Model 2.0, directed by Administrator Jared Isaacman, first-round proposals for Discovery, New Frontiers and Astro-Probe missions will need only a science case, a science implementation plan and a proof-of-concept design. That is about half the current material, cutting selection from 35 months to 19.5.

Fox wrote that principal investigators without major university or commercial backing “will get a fair consideration.” Finalists will carry out implementation studies with Goddard or JPL, or, for some Discovery and New Frontiers missions, Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory under Goddard’s management. NASA says directing work to its centers will reduce competition among them. Medium Explorer and Earth Explorer competitions open wider to universities and industry.

Teams will be judged on past performance on similar projects and can request pairing with Goddard or JPL. Smaller missions, including Small Explorers, Earth Venture, hosted payloads and rideshares, move to a single round, dropping selection from about 32 months to 19. Flagships keep a process reformed after Webb. Missions that breach cost or schedule limits could be canceled, Fox wrote. Teams are expected to use commercial hardware where it helps. NASA will roll out the changes in stages.

26 October, 2026

In an unclassified report, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency claims that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are developing and using space capabilities in ways that threaten all satellites and the services they provide. The 2026 edition of Challenges to Security in Space, current as of July, says China and Russia are building weapons to degrade or destroy other countries’ space services, from missiles to jamming and cyberattacks. The report says that China could field directed-energy weapons in orbit by late 2020s and details Russia’s expanding anti-satellite arsenal. It says both propose “unverifiable” space treaties while refusing to acknowledge their own weapons work.

Russia is developing a satellite to carry a nuclear weapon, which the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bans, the report says. It cites Cosmos 2553, launched in 2022 into an unusual, isolated orbit while Moscow said it was testing radiation effects on electronics. In December 2024, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution on weapons of mass destruction in space by 167-4, with Russia, Iran, North Korea and Syria opposed. The report finds no indication that China plans a nuclear anti-satellite weapon. China supplies space components to Russia, which has aimed jammers at commercial constellations supporting Ukraine and designated U.S. commercial terminals there as legitimate military targets.

China launched 93 times in 2025, up from 22 in 2016, the report says. For comparison, the U.S. made 181 launch attempts that year, 170 of them by SpaceX, according to Payload. China fields more than 510 surveillance satellites, more than tripled since 2018. One of its TJS satellites approached other nations’ spacecraft within 10 kilometers in geostationary orbit in 2023. The U.S. Space Force’s GSSAP satellites also maneuver near other objects in that orbit to inspect them. Shijian-21 towed a dead BeiDou satellite to a higher graveyard orbit in 2022. The U.S. is the only country with an operational reusable rocket, the report says, and China aims to be second. Iran attempted seven launches from 2023 to 2025 and North Korea five and Russia has launched two satellites for Iran. The report includes a 2024 image by Maxar, now Vantor, of China’s Shenlong spaceplane, which open-source trackers and imagery analysts say shows it docked to another satellite. On its third mission, Shenlong released and interacted with an object, the report says.

The report does not assess U.S. capabilities. In September, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the United States “now has, on orbit, space-control weapons,” without describing them. Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation said she knew of no earlier such statement by a U.S. official.

28 October, 2026

The U.S. Space Force plans to give Boeing a no-bid contract worth up to $945.9 million to keep its military communications satellites running, saying the work cannot be competed because Boeing has repeatedly declined to sell the government the necessary data rights.

Space Systems Command posted the notice for the Wideband and Narrowband Global SATCOM Sustainment effort under a federal provision that allows sole-source awards when only one responsible source can meet the need. Boeing built the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) and Ultra High Frequency Follow-On satellites and key parts of the Global SATCOM Configuration and Control Element ground system. The command said Boeing owns the design files for its 702HP and 702MP satellite platforms, along with the flight software source code and simulators, all developed at private expense. Without them, the command said, another contractor would duplicate costs and risk delays to satellites critical to national security, and market research found only Boeing could do the work without a break in service. The contract runs five years at $480.6 million, with a 10-year option worth $465.3 million. It covers round-the-clock anomaly response, collision avoidance, end-of-life disposal and ground-system software, and bringing WGS-11 and WGS-12 into service.

WGS carries communications for U.S., allied and NATO forces: 10 satellites launched from 2007 to 2019. Boeing received $605 million in 2019 to build WGS-11. In September, the U.S. and 10 partner nations amended their WGS agreement, securing $302 million toward WGS-12, which is projected to launch no earlier than 2028 carrying a Protected Tactical SATCOM Prototype payload. The Space Force took over WGS and the Defense Satellite Communications System from the Army in 2022, and the wideband management system this fiscal year, under a 2020 directive from then-Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist to consolidate satellite communications under one service.

28 October, 2026

Britain’s Ministry of Defence awarded Japan-based Astroscale’s U.K. arm 15 million pounds to develop LEDA, a program a ministry official said will help counter spacecraft that maneuver close to satellites. Astroscale is prime contractor, with BAE Systems and Open Cosmos as partners. The company gave no timeline or deliverables.

Rear Adm. Tony Williams, who also serves as Director Space Systems Portfolio at the Ministry of Defence’s National Armaments Director Group, said LEDA will help the U.K. understand orbital warfare and that “control of space is not about seeking conflict in space.” The award follows a U.K. Space Strategy that prioritizes defense and a Defence Investment Plan allotting 3.2 billion pounds to space through 2030. In 2021, Astroscale’s ELSA-d demonstrated magnetic capture, and in 2024 its ADRAS-J inspected a rocket body from under 15 meters. its ELSA-M debris-removal and Orpheus defense missions are upcoming.

The award comes as Astroscale pitches “bodyguard” spacecraft to shield high-value satellites, which defense head Alex Godfrey said could launch within three years at 1% of the value of a constellation like Britain’s 8.4 billion-pound Skynet, putting it within a single country’s budget. He proposed a “geo-patrol force” in which one guard protects two or three allied satellites. U.K. managing director Nick Shave, who wants Astroscale to be “the trusted partner for Space Control,” said the company has signed no bodyguard contracts.

30 October, 2026

Britain will require foreign defense companies that win large contracts to invest in the U.K. up to the full contract value, a policy that might be tested first in the Skynet 6 military satellite competition between Airbus and Lockheed Martin. Under the offsets policy, published Oct. 30 and applying from April 2027, contracts worth more than 50 million pounds ($67 million) will be considered, with obligations met through British jobs, factories, suppliers, technology transfer or U.K.-made parts. A new Offset Authority will agree and monitor them case by case. Poland, Norway and the Netherlands use similar policies. Since 2016, Britain has spent 35.2 billion pounds on overseas defense contracts, 11% of Ministry of Defence spending with industry. The policy follows Britain’s commitment this week to spend 3% of GDP on defense by 2030, on a path to NATO’s 3.5% target in 2035.

The Skynet 6 Wideband Satellite System, valued at 1.5 billion pounds in a 2023 notice, pits Airbus, which builds satellites in Stevenage and Portsmouth, against Lockheed, which proposes a satellite hub in Durham. Both Airbus factories could be endangered if Lockheed wins, Breaking Defense reported. Final bids were due in August 2025. Defense Secretary Wes Streeting told lawmakers the procurement is “still under investigation.”

27 October, 2026

A Ukrainian startup and a Danish satellite maker are testing a satellite as what they call the first step toward a communications network under Ukrainian control, announcing it after October restrictions on SpaceX’s Starlink and Starshield disrupted drone operations. Himera and GomSpace said Oct. 27 that Obria Nano, launched Oct. 1 on SpaceX’s Transporter-18, is being tested to inform the design of a constellation covering Ukraine that would complement European satellite networks.

The aim is to “reduce dependence on external communications providers,” Himera CEO Misha Rudominski said. GomSpace CEO Carsten Drachmann cited Ukraine’s long-term security and economic development. They plan to build satellites and ground terminals in Ukraine but did not disclose specifications, financing or network size. Service returned to normal Oct. 24, Ukraine said. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and U.S. officials gave conflicting accounts of who authorized the limits.

The project follows an Oct. 22 letter of intent among Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, ICEYE and Nokia to explore a sovereign broadband network. Neither effort is expected to replace Starlink, but national constellations could supplement it for some military operations, SpaceNews reported.

27 October, 2026

The US FCC approved Amazon’s $11.5 billion purchase of Globalstar, giving Amazon Leo spectrum and satellites to offer direct-to-phone service as it competes with SpaceX’s Starlink. The deal adds about 25 megahertz of Globalstar’s mobile-satellite spectrum and its two dozen satellites. Amazon Leo, backed by more than $10 billion, has launched nearly 400 satellites since April 2025, plans commercial service by the end of 2026 and, aiming for thousands by 2029, seeks approval for up to 5,105. Starlink has more than 11,000.

After closing, Amazon may build Globalstar’s authorized C-3 system of 48 satellites in 12 planes at 1,414 kilometers, inclined 52 degrees, using 1.6- and 2.5-gigahertz links. Globalstar powers Emergency SOS and Find My for Apple’s iPhone and Watch. Apple invested about $1.5 billion in 2024 and supplied about 63% of its revenue last year. Amazon has agreed with Apple to continue those services and plans to acquire Apple’s 20% stake in Globalstar. The FCC this year authorized SpaceX’s 15,000-satellite and AST SpaceMobile’s 248-satellite direct-to-device systems, and was set to vote Oct. 29 on opening more spectrum for such services.

27 October, 2026

Cowboy Space, led by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, unveiled Big Iron, a rocket whose upper stage would stay in orbit as a megawatt-class AI data center, part of a plan for up to 20,000 such satellites that it says could undercut ground-based computing. The 86-meter stainless-steel rocket, with a reusable booster and nine methane-fueled Clydesdale engines, is designed to carry more than 15,000 kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit.

In orbit, its skin becomes a radiator, its ammonia propellant a coolant and its nitrogen pressurant deploys the solar wings, each 132-by-73-meter satellite would carry five racks of Nvidia GPUs, about 1 megawatt of compute, four times SpaceX’s planned Starmind satellites. With one satellite per launch, the Stampede constellation, pending FCC approval, would need 20,000 launches, from multi-pad sites called Trailheads. Cowboy, formerly Aetherflux, unveiled the rocket Oct. 26 at its “Big Sky Rising” event, targets a first flight in 2028 and will sell launches through Big Iron Express. Its Reason-1 satellite, launched Oct. 1, will test laser power beaming while Reason-2 will run GPUs in orbit in 2027, including for NOAA.

Australia-based, ex-Tesla engineers’ MP Space raises A$23 million for low-cost satellite batteries, while Colorado’s Rendezvous Robotics raises $20 million for tiles that assemble into spacecraft in orbit.

27 October, 2026

Australian startup MP Space raised 23 million Australian dollars ($16 million) to scale up satellite battery production, pitching it as a cheaper alternative to slow, costly suppliers or building power systems in-house. Blackbird led the seed round, joined by Seraphim Space, in its first Australian investment, Systemiq Capital, Speedinvest and MFV Partners.

Founded in 2024 by former Tesla engineers Jay Manley and Sam Paterson, the Sydney company says it has received orders to support more than 500 spacecraft and its batteries, each under 5 kilograms, first flew in October on SpaceX’s Bandwagon-5. Manley said it can sell a fifth to a third below market average and aims to make 5,000 “space widgets” a year by the end of 2027. It plans to add charge controllers, power distribution units, solar-array drives and larger products for Starship-era satellites.

28 October, 2026

Colorado startup Rendezvous Robotics raised $20 million to develop satellites launched as tiles that assemble themselves in orbit, an approach it says would let spacecraft grow larger than a rocket’s nose cone allows and be repaired by swapping parts. MaC Venture Capital and Toyota Ventures led its first priced round, an oversubscribed seed, with the University of Michigan endowment, Astera, Industrious Ventures, Aurelia Foundry, ATX Venture Partners and Mana Ventures. CEO Joe Landon said the company shifted from habitats to satellites, where demand is greater.

The roughly 1-meter hexagonal tiles, based on co-founder Ariel Ekblaw’s TESSERAE research at MIT, carry sensors and processors and use electromagnets to maneuver and latch, sharing power and data. Tests are planned on parabolic flights in November and the International Space Station in December, when 32 tiles will assemble into a 3D structure. A rideshare launch no earlier than April 2028 will test seven tiles in open space joining into one spacecraft, separating and reassembling in a new shape. Partners will add payloads and propulsion.

28 October, 2026

Virgin Galactic ferried its first next-generation space plane, Apeiron, to Spaceport America in New Mexico on Oct. 28, a step toward resuming suborbital tourist flights in 2027. Carried beneath its VMS Eve mothership from Mesa, Arizona, the six-passenger Delta-class vehicle will undergo testing and avionics work before flight tests. Its name, Greek for “boundless,” came from a public vote.

On commercial flights, Eve releases Apeiron at about 45,000 fee and it rockets to space for a few minutes of weightlessness, then lands on a runway. The company says each Delta ship is designed to fly twice a week for more than 500 missions. Apeiron replaces VSS Unity which flew seven commercial missions from 2023 to 2024. A second ship is due in mid-2027. About 675 ticket-holders, representing $203 million in expected revenue, are waiting, and more than 100 have begun flight preparations. Seats cost about $200,000 in 2014 while the latest, at $750,000, sold out, and the next will cost $850,000, Latte Luxury News reported. Blue Origin, which flew 14 crewed New Shepard missions, paused them to focus on NASA’s Artemis moon landings.

30 October, 2026

Canada’s MDA Space will supply the digital antennas for the first 66 satellites of IRIS², the European Union’s planned secure communications constellation meant to give Europe its own sovereign space capability. IRIS² stands for Infrastructure for Resilience, Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite.

Thales Alenia Space, which supplies the satellites’ payloads, issued MDA an authorization to proceed worth more than 100 million Canadian dollars ($72 million), with the full contract still being negotiated. MDA will supply its Aurora digital phased-array antennas, which steer beams electronically, and a digital antenna controller, designed for high-volume production in Montreal. The 66 Ka-band satellites, being built by Airbus under a September contract from Eutelsat, form IRIS²’s first low-Earth-orbit layer and are set to launch in 2029. MDA said the deal adds to its “national sovereign programs of record” and will enter its backlog in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. CEO Mike Greenley called it a “landmark moment.”

31 October, 2026

China’s LandSpace won a 95 million-yuan ($14.3 million) bid to launch Haolong, a reusable cargo spaceplane meant to supply China’s Tiangong space station and return items to Earth. The developers requested bids at the start of October for a launch within five years. The result was announced Oct. 28. LandSpace and the Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute, which ran the procurement, will finalize a contract specifying orbit and launch date. After signing, work should begin on a payload adapter and any needed ground equipment. State broadcaster CCTV had named LandSpace as launch partner for a September 2025 Haolong mission that never flew. CAS Space placed second, bidding the 100 million-yuan maximum, likely with its three-core Kinetica-2.

Haolong, chosen by China’s crewed spaceflight agency in 2024, will be about 10 meters long and 8 meters wide in orbit, folding its wings to fit a 5-meter fairing, and weigh no more than 7,000 kilograms. Its cargo capacity is reportedly in the two-ton class. Work on its heatshield and solar panel-radiator doors is under way and developers said in May it was proceeding as planned but gave no schedule. The agency also chose the single-use Qingzhou, which has made a free-flying test and could reach Tiangong as soon as January 2027 on a Kinetica-2.

A theoretical study in Physical Review D suggests a single black hole might, under narrow conditions, split in two, the reverse of the mergers astronomers detect. For a non-rotating black hole, splitting would reduce entropy, a measure of how many internal arrangements a system can have, which thermodynamics disfavors. Rapid rotation offers a loophole, but the two pieces must separate rather than fall back together. That requirement largely closes the window except possibly for black holes spinning near their maximum rate, said co-author Francesco Sannino of the University of Naples Federico II and the University of Southern Denmark.

The black hole’s outer boundary would divide into two “legs,” giving the paper its “pair-of-pants” title. In theories with extra dimensions, splitting can be thermodynamically favorable, especially when one piece is much smaller, though that does not show it happens. Sannino said no single probability can yet be given, because it depends on how gravity behaves beyond Einstein’s theory. He said primordial black holes, small ones thought to have formed in the early universe, should be more prone to splitting, and gamma-ray telescopes such as Fermi could look for fragments from mergers. Co-authors include Giacomo Cacciapaglia of a joint CNRS–Sorbonne University laboratory in Paris, and Manuel Del Piano and Vania Vellucci of the University of Southern Denmark.

Despatch Out. 👽🛸