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Among science and commerce updates this week, NASA's Swift Observatory reentered Earth's atmosphere and burned up over Sumatra, Indonesia, ending its 22-year mission. I’ll let you read the rest.
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PRIMER
Little Red Dots
Little red dots or LRDs are compact, unusually red objects that the James Webb Space Telescope finds in large numbers in the early universe. Light from the most distant galaxies has traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach us, so Webb sees them as they were in the universe’s first billion years, out of its 13.8-billion-year history. That light has been stretched into infrared wavelengths by the universe’s expansion, which is why an infrared telescope like Webb is needed to see it.
Working out what they are could explain how supermassive black holes grew so large so soon after the Big Bang. Astronomers noticed them back in 2022, less than a full month after the James Webb Space Telescope had begun to produce its first scientific images. There are now hundreds of known little red dots, most seen between about 600 million and 1.6 billion years after the Big Bang.
In another study from May 2026, researchers compiled a sample of 83 LRDs, imaged with JWST, from ultradeep surveys. They found that 36 of the 83 LRDs, including over 80% of the brightest ones, hosted at least one companion that shined bright in blue-ish ultraviolet light. Little red dots with little blue companions. (Credit: Baggen et al., ApJL, 2026)
What they look like
The dots are point-like sources, too small for JWST to resolve, with a “V-shaped” spectrum: blue in the ultraviolet, red in the optical, with the turn near the Balmer limit of hydrogen. Most of the LRDs with existing spectral observations exhibit broad Balmer lines and are thus likely host active galactic nuclei, meaning feeding black holes. Yet they show extremely weak X-ray, mid-infrared, and radio emission, which challenges conventional AGN interpretations, (that is unusual for active galactic nuclei, whose infalling gas typically heats up enough to glow brightly in X-rays), and many little red dots appear largely dust-free.
The Balmer limit, at a wavelength of about 365 nanometers, is the point beyond which light has enough energy to strip electrons from excited hydrogen atoms. Dense hydrogen gas absorbs light at shorter wavelengths, leaving a telltale step in an object’s spectrum.
What they might be
Early explanations split between dust-reddened black holes and densely packed galaxies of stars. One researcher said that “If they were purely made up of stars, they would be the densest galaxies in the universe.” In March 2025, teams led by Anna de Graaff and Rohan Naidu proposed “black hole stars”: feeding massive black holes that are surrounded by dense gas glowing like a star’s surface. A Nature study published in January 2026 argued that they are young, low-mass (10^5–10^7 M⊙), Eddington-accreting SMBHs, buried in a thick cocoon of gas, about a hundred times less massive than previously believed. Other proposals include dense star clusters building giant stars, the subject of this week’s UCLA study, and primordial black holes formed from density fluctuations right after the Big Bang.
Why it matters
If the dots are young black holes, they show the earliest phase of supermassive black hole growth. De Graaff has said that “Because the number of little red dots decreases toward later cosmic times, it must be a short-lived phase.” A rare nearby example, about 1.3 billion light-years away, shows spectral features matching those of LRDs seen in the early Universe, giving astronomers a closer look. The debate is not settled. De Graaff told CNN in March 2026 that “It’s very hard to prove that there is a black hole in LRDs”.
IMAGES
Ancient bedrock in Martian highlands : HiRISE camera, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA
A color-enhanced image of an ancient hill on Mars shows rocks of varied composition, some of which scientists say may have been altered by liquid water, a clue to the planet’s past. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera captured the Southern Highlands site. Exaggerating the colors makes differences between rock types visible. The HiRISE team said bluish and greenish rocks are probably unaltered and rich in pyroxenes and olivine, while yellow, orange and red tones may come from water-altered minerals. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)
Hera approaches Didymos asteroids : ESA
ESA’s Hera spacecraft has photographed a previously unseen side of Didymos (or Didymos A), the asteroid orbited by the moonlet (Didymos B or Dimorphos) NASA’s DART probe struck in 2022. From 60 km, it shows the 780-meter asteroid’s equatorial ridge, boulders, craters and apparent grooves. 151-meter Dimorphos is mostly shadowed. Much of the material DART blasted off Dimorphos is expected to have crossed the roughly 1 km gap to Didymos, so some of these features may have come from that debris.
The team plans to map both asteroids systematically to sort out which changes the impact caused. The 580-kg probe hit Dimorphos at about 6.1 km/s. Detailed images of both asteroids are due Nov. 25. (Credit: ESA)
Hera is seen here approaching DART’s crash site. ESA said its investigation will help make deflecting an Earth-threatening asteroid a repeatable technique. The spacecraft reached the asteroids after a two-year flight and is 196.8 million km from Earth. DART slowed Dimorphos by about 2.7 mm/s, shortening its 11-hour, 55-minute orbit around Didymos by about 33 minutes, a much larger change than predicted, ESA said. A tighter orbit is a shorter loop, and the moonlet also moves faster on it, so each lap takes less time (Kepler’s third law). (Credit: ESA)
Laser beams emulating starlight : European Southern Observatory
Four lasers from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile create artificial stars that let astronomers undo the blurring Earth’s atmosphere causes in images. The beams, faintly visible at lower left, each rise from one of the four Unit Telescopes and make sodium atoms glow in a layer 90 km up. Photographed from 2.5 km away, the layer’s 5-to-10-km thickness stretches the stars into streaks; from the telescopes, they appear as points.
An adaptive optics system tracks their twinkling and reshapes a flexible mirror hundreds of times per second. The target was the supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 3227, an active galaxy whose core shines brightly as the black hole pulls in surrounding gas. ESO astronomer James Leftley is studying several such galaxies with the GRAVITY and MATISSE instruments on the VLT Interferometer, which links the four telescopes so they work like a single one up to 130 meters across. The lasers were added in the recent GRAVITY+ upgrade, which lets the interferometer sharpen incoming light almost anywhere in the southern sky. (Credit: ESO/A. Berdeu)
An astronaut on a spacewalk : Canadian Space Agency
Two astronauts installed a new roll-out solar array outside the International Space Station on Oct. 29, one of eight NASA says will raise the station’s available power by up to 30%. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, pictured, and NASA’s Anil Menon did preparatory work for a Nov. 5 spacewalk when the eighth and final array was installed. It was the first Canadian spacewalk since 2019. The station was 267 miles above the South Atlantic Ocean when photographed. (Credit: CSA)
Astrobee on ISS : Crew-13 Commander, Astronaut Jessica Watkins
A toaster-sized NASA robot flies itself through the International Space Station, part of a seven-year-old program meant to help astronauts with routine chores and test technology in weightlessness. Crew-13 commander Jessica Watkins photographed the cube-shaped Astrobee in the station’s Kibo laboratory on Oct. 13. The free-flying robots also give ground controllers additional eyes and ears aboard, NASA said. The first two, Bumble and Honey, reached the station in 2019; a third, Queen, followed later that year. (Credit: NASA/Jessica Watkins)
SCIENCE
NASA seeks commercial boost to extend Hubble’s life as Swift telescope reenters and burns up, after failed rescue
The Hubble Telescope in orbit. (Credit: NASA)
1 November, 2026
NASA is asking companies whether they could boost the Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit, potentially extending the life of a telescope NASA says will likely reenter the atmosphere in 2033 or 2034. The Oct. 29 request for information, open until Nov. 30, also seeks interest in servicing Hubble to enhance its capabilities or performing a controlled reentry or orbital disposal.
Hubble lacks propulsion to hold its orbit, and NASA said a mission would need to take place by 2032. Launched in 1990 with the European Space Agency, Hubble was serviced five times by shuttle astronauts, most recently in 2009, and helped show the universe’s expansion is accelerating, a Nobel-winning discovery. Astronomers request about seven times the observing time available, NASA said, and its observations have produced at least 23,000 papers. Jared Isaacman, now NASA administrator, proposed a servicing mission using SpaceX hardware in 2022 which NASA had declined, citing possible risks to the telescope.
An artist’s concept of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in orbit with spacecraft elements identified. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)
4 November, 2026
The RFI comes when NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which studied the universe’s most powerful explosions for nearly 22 years, reentered the atmosphere Nov. 4 over Indonesia after a commercial rescue mission failed.
The U.S. Space Force confirmed reentry at 7:39 a.m. EST over North Sumatra. NASA expected most of the spacecraft to burn up, though some parts may have survived. Designed for a two-year mission, Swift could swing its telescopes 50 degrees in under 75 seconds to catch gamma-ray bursts and other short-lived events, alerting other observatories to follow up. It detected its 1,000th gamma-ray burst in 2015. In 2008 it caught a rise in X-rays preceding a supernova, the earliest phase of one ever observed. In 2017 it helped trace high-energy neutrinos detected by the IceCube observatory to a supermassive black hole at a galaxy’s center, and in 2025 it detected hydroxyl, a sign of water, on the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS.
Astronomers had been preparing to use it alongside the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Solar activity starting in 2024 swelled Earth’s upper atmosphere, increasing drag and pulling Swift down faster than expected. It made its last observation Oct. 20 at about 275 km. NASA ended the mission three days later, when drag kept its telescopes from holding steady.
In a $30 million mission, NASA gave Katalyst Space Technologies less than a year to build LINK, a spacecraft meant to grab Swift and push it higher. After launching July 3, LINK lost two of its three reaction wheels, which turn a spacecraft without fuel, and spun out of control amid propulsion problems. Engineers uploaded new control software and fired thrusters against the spin, cutting it from about 9 degrees per second to 1.5, NASA said in August. Katalyst said too little propellant remained to safely capture and boost Swift, and the attempt was called off later that month. LINK still flew within 12 to 15 km of Swift, deployed its three robotic arms and tested its electric thrusters before reentering in September. Hubble would reportedly have been next had the mission worked.
China details two-launch plan to land astronauts on the moon before 2030
The Lanyue lander during its test in the gravity simulator in 2025. (Credit: Xinhua)
1 November, 2026
China has detailed how it plans to land astronauts on the moon before 2030, using two rockets whose spacecraft meet in lunar orbit. Wang Xiang, the program’s chief designer, said Oct. 31 that the Mengzhou crew capsule and Lanyue lander would launch separately and dock, with astronauts moving to Lanyue to descend. He said the approach fits China’s existing capabilities, that developing the two spacecraft separately allows standardized production, and that mobilizing resources nationwide is China’s main advantage in meeting the plan’s challenges. Major tests completed include Mengzhou escape tests and a Lanyue landing-and-takeoff test, Wang said. He added that lunar exploration should build knowledge before turning to resource use, and that the robotic Chang’e program will support the crewed effort.
A slide shared online and publicized by the CNSpaceflight account, which tracks China’s space program, outlines four missions: a Long March 10A flight of Mengzhou to low Earth orbit in 2027, an uncrewed Lanyue landing test in 2028, a dual-launch lunar-orbit rehearsal in 2029, then the crewed landing. Citing a separate post, CNSpaceflight said three astronauts would launch and two would land, spending three days on the surface with daily moonwalks. The account interprets “before 2030” as deliberately flexible wording: a 2029 landing would coincide with the 80th anniversary of the People’s Republic, while a slip into 2030 could still be presented as meeting the goal.
Meanwhile, NASA targets early 2028 for Artemis IV, its first crewed landing since 1972, aboard SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon. It plans Artemis III, a docking test with the landers in Earth orbit, for summer 2027. Starship first reached orbit Sept. 28 but has yet to demonstrate refueling in space. Blue Moon is scheduled for its first, uncrewed flight next spring. NASA and U.S. military officials argue that whoever builds lunar bases first can claim the best sites, gain access to water ice and set norms of behavior on the moon.
ESA satellite obeys spoken radio command, in what its team calls a first
A live voice command from the ground successfully directed the satellite to launch DOOM during an evening pass. To comply with legal identification rules, the operator spoke the club call sign into the microphone, followed by the activation phrase twice: "LIMA ALFA FOUR OSCAR, PRETTY PLAY DOOM DOOM DOOM." The text stamped across this postcard shows what the onboard speech-to-text software made of the transmission. While the satellite's limited computing power required a small, lower-accuracy AI model, it successfully picked up the "DOOM" trigger words and sent this downlinked postcard back to Earth. (Credit: Tanagra Space)
4 November, 2026
An experimental European Space Agency satellite obeyed a spoken radio command in what its team calls a first, a capability the lead researcher says could one day help satellites relay distress calls. Satellites are normally commanded with structured binary data packets. On July 27, radio amateurs from the Norwegian Radio Relay League’s Oslo group, using call sign LA4O, transmitted “PRETTY PLAY DOOM” to the OPS-SAT PRETTY cubesat, launched in 2023.
Acting on its own, the satellite recovered the voice from noise, transcribed it with an onboard speech-to-text model, launched the 1993 video game Doom and sent down a “postcard” image of the moment. It worked twice that day, first with a looped synthesized voice, then with an operator speaking live into a microphone. Amateurs in Legnica, Poland, ran earlier link tests from April to June, and ESA’s OPS-SAT team scheduled and operated the passes. Lead researcher Georges Labrèche, founder of Tanagra Space, said similar onboard models might detect astronomical events such as gamma-ray bursts directly.
NASA’s Artemis II launch disturbed the upper atmosphere, possibly skewing GPS
In this three minute exposure, NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft with NASA and CSA astronauts onboard, launches on the Artemis II mission, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber)
4 November, 2026
NASA’s Artemis II moon launch in April disturbed the electrically charged upper atmosphere that GPS signals cross, tearing a “hole”, potentially causing positioning errors of several meters, according to a preprint study by researchers in Taiwan. “Hole” means a drop in electron density, not a physical tear.
GPS satellites orbit about 20,200 km up, and changes in the layer’s electron density speed or slow their signals, skewing position fixes. Using ground GPS stations, the team recorded three disturbances over North America, each spanning more than 5,000 km: one from liftoff and two from upper-stage burns about 185 km up. The burns caused larger disturbances than liftoff. The disturbances exceeded those of any previous launch, up to 10 times those of SpaceX’s Starship tests, though Starship has twice the liftoff thrust.
Co-author Charles Lin said errors of a couple of meters could make a self-driving car change lanes and affect drones. The study did not measure actual GPS failures. Solar storms cause similar but longer-lasting errors; one in November 2025 produced errors exceeding 10 meters, another study found. The researchers called such burns a “repeatable source” of human-made space weather and urged study of effects on navigation and high-frequency radio. Lin expects the effects to grow as more missions head to the moon and Mars.
Mars volcanoes may be dormant rather than dead, gas detected by a spacecraft suggests
The northern flanks of the Alba Mons volcano on Mars in wider context. The white icon shows the location of the close-up image featured in this story. (Credit: MEX/HRSC global color mosaic, ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, G. Michael. Inset: Blended MOLA-HRSC digital elevation model, Fergason et al., 2018)
4 November, 2026
Gas detected above fresh cracks on a Martian volcano suggests Mars may still have active magma beneath its surface, according to researchers using a European spacecraft. Marsquakes and orbital images showing some volcanoes were active within the last few million years had already pointed that way, though no eruptions or lava flows have been observed.
Lead author Alexander Trokhimovskiy and colleagues used the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter’s Atmospheric Chemistry Suite to measure hydrogen chloride, a gas released by magma on Earth, at parts-per-billion levels near Alba Mons, the largest Martian volcano by area. The gas normally peaks in northern winter but appeared at low altitudes in early northern summer, which atmospheric models could not explain, the team reported in Science Advances on Nov. 4. The team proposes gas from a dormant magma chamber builds up under winter ice and escapes when the ice vaporizes. Co-leader Daniel Mège likened the detection to finding “a needle in a haystack,” a handful of molecules from a possibly intermittent source. He said the fissures would be worth searching for life if hydrothermal systems are active.
NASA unveils X-70 Fractal, a crewed X-plane for testing new flight technology
Generated image of NASA’s new X-70 Fractal experimental aircraft, a crewed, rapidly reconfigurable research platform for advanced aviation technologies. (Credit: NASA)
4 November, 2026
NASA has announced the X-70 Fractal, a crewed experimental aircraft meant to speed testing of new aviation technology, including maneuvers the agency says have never been demonstrated in crewed flight. Unveiled Nov. 4 at Kennedy Space Center, it will have reconfigurable flight controls and carry up to 2,000 pounds of swappable payloads inside and out. NASA says the 10,000-pound aircraft will cruise at Mach 0.75, similar to an older Boeing 737, reach 45,000 feet and fly more than 1,500 nautical miles. Administrator Jared Isaacman said NASA expects its first flight “under the NASA banner” within two years. NASA’s statement did not say whether the X-70 is a new design. The agency released only an AI-generated image of it, which resembles the Model 437 Vanguard, an experimental aircraft of similar takeoff weight developed by Scaled Composites and Northrop Grumman.
The X-70 joins a line of NASA X-planes that includes the X-1, which first broke the sound barrier in 1947, and the X-15 hypersonic research aircraft. The most recent, the X-59, has flown for over a year. Its long nose dampens shock waves so it can fly faster than sound without loud sonic booms, and pilots see ahead through a camera-fed screen instead of a forward window. Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator also aims to lessen sonic booms, and DARPA, the Pentagon’s research agency, is developing its own X-plane, CRANE. Separately, Boeing is building the F-47, a next-generation military stealth fighter.
NASA awards moon base contracts, moves ahead with nuclear-powered moon rover built from Mars rover parts
A rendering concept of living and working at Moon Base. (Credit: NASA)
7 November, 2026
NASA announced new contracts and a nuclear-powered rover Saturday to build toward a permanent base at the moon’s south pole, with equipment meant to be in place before astronauts arrive. Eight companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, ispace-U.S., Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems and Voyager Technologies, will compete for lunar cargo deliveries under a 10-year contract worth up to $10 billion. Program manager Carlos García-Galán said those landers will need to carry up to six metric tons. NASA raised its existing cargo contract from $2.6 billion to $4.2 billion, with deliveries running through 2033.
The six-wheeled PROMISE rover, built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory from spare and test Mars rover hardware, can work through lunar nights and in permanently shadowed regions thought to hold ice. It will drill about 1 meter down, test a new radiation-tolerant computer and run an 18-month mission after launching in late 2028. Blue Origin received $94 million, with a $140 million option, to land it. Science chief Nicky Fox called it a scout for the base.
NASA awarded about $1.3 billion in task orders to Arrow Science and Technology, Blue Origin and Impulse Space for cargo transport demonstrations, including delivery of MoonFall scouting drones and the CAPSTONE 02 spacecraft. SpaceX will launch communications satellites between Earth and the moon on Starship in 2028. Honeybee Robotics, Redwire and Yank Technologies will supply energy storage, power generation and wireless power-transfer hardware for a small lunar power and communications tower. García-Galán said Blue Origin’s Blue Ring, still in development, could later support lunar communications.
MILITARY
Pentagon backs LeoLabs, Redwire and Viasat with space loans and contracts for space tracking, low-orbit tests and data network
LeoLabs gets a conditional $150 million loan for tracking radars, Redwire $20 million for a DARPA low-orbit test, and Viasat up to $450 million for a military data hub.
4 November, 2026
The Pentagon has conditionally agreed to lend $150 million to LeoLabs to expand the company’s network of ground radars that track objects in orbit, a top priority for military space leaders. The Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) loan must be matched by private investment for a total of $300 million, and LeoLabs must meet financial, legal and technical conditions before it closes. LeoLabs said the financing will help it finish two U.S. manufacturing facilities by 2028. The company expects to add dozens of radars by 2030. Its network includes sites in New Zealand, Australia, Alaska, Texas and Hawaii, with a catalog of nearly 29,000 objects. The Space Force awarded LeoLabs a $20 million prototype contract in August for a modified Scout radar.
The Pentagon described LeoLabs as the only commercially available provider of ground-based radar space tracking in the U.S. Founded in 2016, the company operates fixed Seeker and Ranger radars alongside its mobile Scout units, and said the financing will also expand its ability to deliver “sovereign radars” to U.S. and allied government customers. In September 2025, the Office of Space Commerce and the Space Force’s Joint Commercial Operations cell licensed access to its object catalog, radar observations and maneuver-detection data. LeoLabs is also one of six companies chosen for the Space Force’s Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, which would supply tracking support in peacetime and surge capacity during a conflict.
A rendering of Redwire's SabreSat platform in VLEO. (Credit: Redwire)
4 November, 2026
DARPA awarded Redwire $20 million to fly a scaled-down test spacecraft in very low Earth orbit (VLEO), where satellites can gain sharper imaging but face heavy atmospheric drag, ahead of a mission testing engines that use thin air as propellant. The flight, under DARPA’s Otter program, is targeted for late 2027 and will last less than a day, Redwire said.
The full Otter mission, meant to last more than a year but not yet scheduled, will test “air-breathing” thrusters that ionize thin air, which DARPA says offers a virtually unlimited supply of propellant. On Otter since 2024, Redwire won a $44 million contract in November 2025 to build the full-scale SabreSat-based spacecraft. Redwire executive Spence Wise said the orbit offers low latency and can support reconnaissance and communications, but spacecraft must minimize drag, generate enough power for propulsion and withstand atomic oxygen.
Redwire also leads the European Space Agency’s Skimsat very-low-orbit mission, targeting a first flight no earlier than 2027. Wise said export-control rules limit what the two programs can share.
5 November, 2026
The Space Force hired Viasat to build a control center that will route data among satellite constellations, part of a network meant to support U.S. forces and the planned Golden Dome missile defense system. Golden Dome is the Pentagon’s planned layered defense against advanced missile and aerial threats to the U.S.
U.S. Space Systems Command (SSC) awarded Viasat a contract worth up to $450 million, with a $115 million initial order, for the Mission Operations Center of the Space Data Network Backbone. It will route data by mission priority across providers, which SSC says will reduce single points of failure. SpaceX won a $2.3 billion backbone contract in May and five companies including Amazon and Lockheed Martin got $60 million in August to test links. The Space Force budgeted $4.5 billion for the network in fiscal 2027, its second-largest unclassified item, behind $7.9 billion for Space-Based Air Moving Target Indicator that would track aircraft from space, according to the Aerospace Corporation said.
COMMERCIAL
Google’s Suncatcher satellite runs its AI chip, Tensor Processing Unit, in orbit, testing space data centers
A rendering of Planet's Owl imaging satellite, a concept representation associated with Google's Project Suncatcher. (Credit: Planet Labs)
1 November, 2026
Google says a prototype satellite has run an AI chip in orbit and returned a response, an early test of whether solar-powered satellites could host AI computing. The satellite, built with Planet and launched Oct. 1, ran Google’s Gemma 4 on a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) and returned a haiku, which Google called the first AI response from a data center-class TPU in orbit.
However, the claim is specific to TPUs. Starcloud ran Gemma on an Nvidia H100 chip in orbit in December 2025. Google’s satellite generates up to 1 kilowatt, enough to run one of four TPUs at a time for about 20 minutes, TechCrunch reported. Google announced the project in November 2025 with radiation tests and laser-link results, and says its economics depend on launch costs near $200 per kilogram by the mid-2030s. Heat and radiation tests come next, with two linked satellites planned for 2027.
China's Star Vision to build 20-satellite constellation for Oman as Beijing pushes BeiDou in the Gulf
2 November, 2026
Chinese satellite maker STAR.VISION agreed to build a 20-satellite constellation with an Omani partner, among deals signed during the Sultan of Oman’s state visit to China as Beijing seeks wider use of its home-grown technologies abroad. The governments also signed agreements on applying China’s BeiDou navigation system, a rival to GPS, during the Nov. 1-2 visit, the first by an Omani sultan in 48 years of diplomatic relations. China signed a BeiDou agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2016 and has since pursued initiatives in Tunisia and Iraq. China is Oman’s largest trading partner, with about $25 billion in trade in 2025, according to Omani figures, and Oman is seeking to diversify its oil-dependent economy under its Vision 2040 plan.
STAR.VISION and Oman Lens will develop the constellation under what they call the Space Silk Road Program. They will also build a satellite assembly and testing center and a space AI lab in Oman, train 1,000 specialists and fund graduate degrees in China for 30 Omanis. The satellites, to be built in China, will carry onboard AI but no launch date is set. STAR.VISION said it is the first time a Chinese commercial space company has signed an agreement covering an entire constellation. The two have worked together since 2023, launching the OL-1 imaging satellite in 2024 and setting up a ground station. In October they agreed on two more imaging satellites with 0.55-meter resolution. STAR.VISION also built two hyperspectral imaging satellites for Uzbekistan and Indonesia that launched in August.
Natixis economist Alicia Garcia-Herrero said Oman’s strategic importance is growing as Gulf states seek alternative energy export routes amid the Iran war. She also said China is eyeing infrastructure contracts as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates consider pipeline routes toward Oman. In their joint statement, Oman and China urged the U.S. and Iran to reach a comprehensive ceasefire and called for restoring safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.
CesiumAstro raises $730 million, Northwood $375 million for satellite networks
CesiumAstro’s $730 million Series D, valuing it above $4.5 billion, funds a 737-satellite constellation; Northwood’s $375 million Series C, at $2 billion, expands its ground-station network.
2 November, 2026
Northwood Space, the California aerospace startup, raised $375 million to expand a shared network of ground antennas that exchange data with satellites, capacity the company says has become a bottleneck as satellites multiply. The Series C, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth with participation from investors including In-Q-Tel, values the company at $2 billion and brings total funding above $500 million. HSBC Innovation Banking added a separate credit facility. It follows a $100 million round in January, when Northwood also won a three-year $49.8 million Space Force contract to support its Satellite Control Network. The company said it has since linked with a government satellite in geostationary orbit in a prototype for the Space Force.
Northwood makes two antennas: Portal, a phased array for command and control that can communicate with six satellites at once, and Prism, a high-throughput dish that links with one at a time. It combined 10 Portals to match the receive performance of a 20-foot dish, and it targets sites capable of more than 100 gigabits per second by the end of 2027. The company says a new site takes three months and a new antenna goes live three to four hours after delivery. Satellite operators book passes through an online API. It built 29 antennas in the past year and aims for hundreds a year from a new Torrance, California, factory. The company has 140 employees and plans to add 400 jobs over three years.
5 November, 2026
CesiumAstro, an Austin-based maker of satellite communications hardware, raised $730 million to build its own 737-satellite constellation, moving from supplying equipment to operating satellites. The Series D, led by Janus Henderson, values the company above $4.5 billion and includes $100 million in debt from the Export-Import Bank and JPMorgan.
It follows $470 million raised in February. The constellation, called Synchronicity, would provide communications and onboard computing for commercial and defense customers. CesiumAstro aims for 350 in orbit by 2032 but has not settled how to launch them. Its first satellite, Element-1, launched in October after two and a half years of development, founder and CEO Shey Sabripour said. Seven more have launches secured for 2028 and 2029. In the past year the company bought radio-frequency chipmaker Jariet Technologies, mission software firm 1Aardvark and AI signal-analysis company Vidrovr, and Sabripour said it has “eyes on quite a few” more. It also plans to spend $500 million over five years expanding in Austin.
Starfish Space loses NASA debris-inspection satellite a month after launch
A rendering of Starfish’s Otter servicing spacecraft, in Earth orbit. (Credit: Starfish Space)
3 November, 2026
NASA’s Small Spacecraft Propulsion and Inspection Capability (SSPICY) mission, led by Starfish Space spacecraft meant to inspect defunct satellites and gather data for future debris removal, has been lost a month after launch. The Otter launched Oct. 1 but lost contact during commissioning after its fault-protection software kept its radio erroneously switched off, NASA said. The mission was NASA’s first funded commercial debris-inspection effort, worth $15 million. The fault occurred on the spacecraft platform supplied by satellite infrastructure provider, Astro Digital.
SSPICY was the first flight of Starfish’s Otter, meant to demonstrate propulsion, navigation and a robotic boom but it is Starfish’s second setback in orbit traced to another company’s hardware. In 2023, its Otter Pup 1 was released spinning at 330 degrees per second after a problem with the transfer vehicle carrying it, built by Launcher. Engineers recovered it after six weeks. The loss also follows Katalyst Space’s failed NASA-backed attempt this summer to boost the Swift observatory, which reentered the atmosphere Nov. 4.
Starfish said it is fixing the platform and may complete some objectives on other missions. Separately, its Otter Pup 2, launched in 2025 and still operating, came within 33 meters of another satellite. Starfish holds a $52.5 million Space Development Agency contract to deorbit satellites.
NASA picks Astranis, SES and Viasat to design TDRS relay replacements
By relaying data between spacecraft and ground stations, the TDRS fleet provides near-constant communication relay links between Earth and satellites below geosynchronous orbit. (Credit: NASA / David Ryan)
4 November, 2026
NASA has picked three companies to design commercial replacements for its aging Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS), aiming to keep missions already in orbit connected as the government-owned fleet nears retirement. Astranis ($264.3 million), SES unit Global Enterprise Solutions ($340.4 million) and Viasat ($460.9 million) received firm-fixed-price contracts with combined ceilings of $1.07 billion. The first phase, focused on capability concepts, runs through May 3, 2027. NASA can extend work through 2029 and fund in-orbit demonstrations.
The awards, under a project called NEXUS, are meant for missions whose radios work only with TDRS and cannot be modified after launch. NASA wants a commercial Ka-band service those spacecraft can use without changes for at least 15 years. A separate $278.5 million effort begun in 2022 with six companies, including SpaceX and Amazon, is developing commercial services for missions launching as early as 2031, which can be built to use those networks from the start.
NASA said it is gradually retiring the fleet and adopting commercial services for future missions, and it stopped assigning new missions to TDRS in 2024. The fleet’s three generations launched between 1983 and 2017, and NASA has flagged 2029 to 2031 as a possible continuity risk.
RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT
Colliding stars in the early universe may have seeded supermassive black holes
Stars in the early universe may have collided and merged often enough to build giant stars that collapsed into black hole “seeds,” UCLA-led simulations suggest, offering one explanation for how supermassive black holes grew so quickly. The James Webb Space Telescope has found supermassive black holes less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, though such growth was thought to take at least 1 billion years. The seeds would be intermediate-mass black holes, between 100 and 100,000 times the sun’s mass, which are rarely observed. In the models, fast collisions in dense clusters destroyed stars, while slow ones merged them repeatedly until one held the mass of an entire cluster, said UCLA’s Claire Williams. She said the same clusters could supply stars and gas that influence the black hole’s later growth. Once a black hole forms, its gravity speeds up nearby stars so collisions destroy them instead, the model suggests. Williams said the result resembles the Milky Way’s center, a black hole inside a dense star cluster.
The team suggests the telescope’s “little red dots,” compact objects in the early universe that had disappeared by the time the universe was 2 billion years old, may be such clusters. Co-author Smadar Naoz likened competing explanations of the dots to blind people each describing a different part of an elephant, saying the work connects several. The researchers are not the first to propose such collisions. The study appeared Oct. 26 in The Astrophysical Journal.
Despatch Out. 👽🛸
