Austin's Thoughts

Space Industry Cheat Sheet: Golden Dome Update, Europe’s Bold Merger, China’s Lunar Ambitions, and the D2D Shakeup

Team, here is your week­ly cheat sheet. My ini­tial con­cern is that the ongo­ing gov­ern­ment shut­down has slowed the Gold­en Dome of Amer­i­ca’s efforts. My cur­rent under­stand­ing is that over 1,000 com­pa­nies have sub­mit­ted for the IDIQ. Depend­ing on who is still work­ing, that is a lot of the RFP respons­es to fil­ter for the com­pli­ance check for the two (up to three) past per­for­mances. Once the gov­ern­ment opens back up, the flood­gates will open from the Gold­en Dome team, along with more clar­i­ty on the mis­sion’s needs. In the mean­time, there has been a major Euro­pean con­sol­i­da­tion of its own space efforts, with Chi­na rac­ing ahead in lunar efforts. Let’s dive into the key devel­op­ments that caught my attention.

Europe’s Answer to SpaceX Takes Shape

The biggest news this week came from across the Atlantic, where Euro­pean aero­space giants Air­bus, Leonar­do, and Thales signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing to merge their space busi­ness­es into a sin­gle pow­er­house. With three large aero­space com­pa­nies com­bin­ing their efforts, it’s Europe’s most seri­ous attempt yet to cre­ate a com­peti­tor that can go toe-to-toe with SpaceX and oth­er Amer­i­can space companies.

The num­bers are impres­sive: the unnamed joint ven­ture will employ 25,000 peo­ple and gen­er­ate around €6.5 bil­lion ($7.5 bil­lion) in annu­al rev­enue. Air­bus will hold a 35% stake, while Leonar­do and Thales will each own 32.5%. The com­pa­nies have been nego­ti­at­ing this deal, code­named “Project Bro­mo,” for months, and it’s clear they’re seri­ous about cre­at­ing what they call a “uni­fied, inte­grat­ed and resilient Euro­pean space player.”

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is what they’re NOT doing—competing in launch ser­vices. The joint state­ment made it clear they won’t chal­lenge SpaceX’s dom­i­nance in reusable rock­ets. Instead, they’re focus­ing on satel­lites, space infra­struc­ture, and ser­vices. Smart move, con­sid­er­ing how far behind Europe has fall­en in the launch game.

The tim­ing could­n’t be more crit­i­cal. Air­bus report­ed a stag­ger­ing €989 mil­lion loss last year due to cost over­runs and delays in var­i­ous space pro­grams. This merg­er rep­re­sents a life­line for Euro­pean space ambi­tions. How­ev­er, the Euro­pean reg­u­la­to­ry approvals are often slow, so we will not see the new enti­ty oper­a­tional until 2027.

The Direct-to-Device Wars Heat Up

The D2D sec­tor saw major con­sol­i­da­tion this week with Lynk Glob­al and Omni­space announc­ing their intent to merge. By com­bin­ing, com­pa­nies increase their access to spec­trum —the lifeblood of satel­lite communications.

Omni­space brings 60 mega­hertz of valu­able S‑band spec­trum to the table. At the same time, Lynk con­tributes its oper­a­tional D2D plat­form, cur­rent­ly serv­ing sev­er­al island nations. SES, which has invest­ed in both com­pa­nies, will become a major stake­hold­er in the com­bined enti­ty. Cur­rent Lynk CEO Ramu Potarazu will lead the merged com­pa­ny, with Omni­space’s Ram Viswanathan shift­ing to chief strat­e­gy officer.

The merg­er comes at a cru­cial time. SpaceX’s aggres­sive push into D2D ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly with its recent Echostar spec­trum acqui­si­tion, is reshap­ing the com­pet­i­tive land­scape. Even Irid­i­um felt the heat this week, revis­ing its 2025 rev­enue growth fore­cast down to 3% and with­draw­ing its $1 bil­lion rev­enue tar­get for 2030. CEO Matt Desch did­n’t mince words, call­ing SpaceX’s D2D push “dis­rup­tive to the sta­tus quo.”

China’s Lunar Water Race

Here’s some­thing that should have every Amer­i­can space enthu­si­ast con­cerned: Chi­na is on track to beat the U.S. to extract­ing water from the Moon. The Chi­nese Nation­al Space Agency con­firmed that Chang’e 7 will launch in August 2025 2026, car­ry­ing 18 sci­en­tif­ic pay­loads, includ­ing a mini-fly­ing probe specif­i­cal­ly designed to ana­lyze lunar soil for water molecules.

The mis­sion will land on the rim of Shack­le­ton Crater, a prime loca­tion for water ice deposits. What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive is the inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion – Chi­na is car­ry­ing pay­loads from Rus­sia, Egypt, Bahrain, Thai­land, Italy, Switzer­land, and even a Hawaii-based NGO.

Mean­while, the U.S. suf­fered a set­back when Intu­itive Machines’ recent lunar land­ing top­pled over, pre­vent­ing NASA’s PRIME‑1 drill from search­ing for water ice. The next U.S. attempts won’t come until 2026 at the ear­li­est. Once again, the U.S. is in a race to return to the Moon; this time, it is not about sci­en­tif­ic brag­ging rights – if Chi­na dis­cov­ers water on the Moon, it gives a major inter­na­tion­al com­peti­tor a clear path to sus­tain­able lunar operations. 

Golden Dome Takes Center Stage

The Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense ini­tia­tive con­tin­ued to gen­er­ate buzz this week. Apex, a satel­lite man­u­fac­tur­ing start­up found­ed just in 2022, announced it would invest $15 mil­lion of its own mon­ey in “Project Shad­ow” – a demon­stra­tion of space-based inter­cep­tors sched­uled for June 2026.

This move final­ly explains Apex’s mys­te­ri­ous back-to-back $200 mil­lion fund­ing rounds this year. The com­pa­ny plans to use its Nova satel­lite bus to deploy two inter­cep­tors equipped with high-thrust sol­id rock­et motors. CEO Ian Cin­na­mon has been meet­ing with Pen­ta­gon offi­cials and defense indus­try part­ners. How­ev­er, he’s keep­ing those names close to the vest.

The poten­tial pay­off is enor­mous. AEI esti­mates boost-phase inter­cep­tors could cost $7 bil­lion in R&D and $11 mil­lion per unit, with thou­sands poten­tial­ly need­ed. If Apex can prove its con­cept works, it could posi­tion itself for one of the largest defense con­tracts in decades.

Innovation on the Horizon

Two fas­ci­nat­ing star­tups caught my eye this week. First, Nyxara is devel­op­ing laser tech­nol­o­gy that can lit­er­al­ly punch through cloud cov­er to enable opti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions in any weath­er. Found­ed by Gul­mo­har Ahluwalia, who helped tran­si­tion Aus­tralia to 5G, the com­pa­ny uses a two-laser sys­tem: one pow­er­ful beam to vapor­ize water droplets in clouds, cre­at­ing a clear chan­nel for a sec­ond data-trans­mis­sion laser. Cloud cov­er has been an issue for line-of-sight com­mu­ni­ca­tion (cloud = rain = no talk­ing), but this inno­v­a­tive approach elim­i­nates the weath­er-depen­dent bot­tle­neck. Nyxara plans field demon­stra­tions ear­ly next year and aims to achieve com­mer­cial roll­out with­in 5 years.

Mean­while, Muon Space announced a part­ner­ship with SpaceX to inte­grate Star­link’s mini-laser ter­mi­nals into its satel­lites start­ing in 2027. This will enable 25 Gbps data rates and near-real-time access to satel­lite data with­out wait­ing for ground sta­tion pass­es. For appli­ca­tions such as wild­fire detec­tion, this could mean deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal data to oper­a­tors in min­utes rather than hours.

Earnings Season Reality Check

Q3 earn­ings paint­ed a mixed pic­ture for the space indus­try. Lock­heed Mar­t­in’s space divi­sion post­ed strong results, with $3.4 bil­lion in sales, up from $3.1 bil­lion last year, dri­ven large­ly by strate­gic mis­sile defense pro­grams – like­ly Gold­en Dome-relat­ed. CEO Jim Taiclet specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the ini­tia­tive dur­ing the earn­ings call.

Northrop Grum­man’s space seg­ment, how­ev­er, saw sales drop to $2.7 bil­lion from $2.9 bil­lion last year, attrib­uted to few­er SDA satel­lite con­tracts and com­ple­tion of Next Gen­er­a­tion Inter­cep­tor work. Irid­i­um beat expec­ta­tions with $226.9 mil­lion in rev­enue, but its stock still dropped 8% as investors digest­ed com­pet­i­tive threats from SpaceX.

Looking Ahead

As we head into the final months of 2025, sev­er­al trends are crys­tal­liz­ing along with con­tin­ued uncer­tain­ty of a gov­ern­ment shut­down. The space indus­try is con­sol­i­dat­ing rapid­ly as com­pa­nies seek scale to com­pete. The race for lunar resources is inten­si­fy­ing, with Chi­na pulling ahead. Direct-to-device ser­vices are becom­ing a bat­tle­ground that’s reshap­ing the entire sat­com indus­try. And Gold­en Dome is emerg­ing as the largest space-based defense pro­gram in history.

For those of us in the nation­al defense tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor, these devel­op­ments under­score the crit­i­cal impor­tance of main­tain­ing Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in space. The Euro­pean merg­er shows our allies rec­og­nize they’re falling behind. Chi­na’s lunar progress demon­strates they’re not just catch­ing up but poten­tial­ly sur­pass­ing us in key areas. And the scram­ble for D2D spec­trum and Gold­en Dome con­tracts shows that space is increas­ing­ly where both com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary advan­tage will be determined.

 

Stay tuned for next week’s update, and as always, keep look­ing up!

 

Clin­ton Austin is a Busi­ness Exec­u­tive, spe­cial­iz­ing in defense tech­nol­o­gy and strate­gic planning.

October 27, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Cheat Sheet: Special Report — Accelerating Defense Innovation through Lesson Learned from Commercial Space

How Information Technology Can Transform the Golden Dome Initiative

The Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense sys­tem rep­re­sents Amer­i­ca’s most ambi­tious defense pro­gram since Rea­gan’s Strate­gic Defense Ini­tia­tive. With a $175 bil­lion price tag and the promise to rev­o­lu­tion­ize home­land defense, it high­lights a crit­i­cal chal­lenge: how can the Depart­ment of Defense lever­age com­mer­cial inno­va­tion while man­ag­ing decades of tech­ni­cal debt? The answer lies in trans­form­ing our approach to infor­ma­tion technology.

Commercial Success Stories: The IT Revolution in Space

SpaceX’s Digital-First Philosophy

SpaceX did­n’t just build bet­ter rockets—they built bet­ter infor­ma­tion sys­tems. Their achieve­ments stem from a fun­da­men­tal IT phi­los­o­phy that tra­di­tion­al defense con­trac­tors have strug­gled to replicate.

Ver­ti­cal Inte­gra­tion Through Soft­ware: SpaceX devel­ops approx­i­mate­ly 80% of its soft­ware in-house, from flight con­trol sys­tems to man­u­fac­tur­ing automa­tion. This approach enables rapid iteration—Falcon 9’s flight soft­ware updates week­ly, some­thing unthink­able in tra­di­tion­al aero­space, where soft­ware changes typ­i­cal­ly require years of certification.

Real-Time Data Archi­tec­ture: Every Fal­con 9 gen­er­ates 30 ter­abytes of teleme­try data per flight. SpaceX’s IT infra­struc­ture process­es this in real-time, feed­ing machine learn­ing mod­els that pre­dict fail­ures before they occur. Their Star­link con­stel­la­tion man­ages over 4,000 satel­lites through autonomous sys­tems that would require thou­sands of oper­a­tors using tra­di­tion­al methods.

Dig­i­tal Twin Tech­nol­o­gy: Before Star­ship flies, it exists as a com­plete dig­i­tal mod­el. SpaceX sim­u­lates mil­lions of flight sce­nar­ios to test the inte­gra­tion of soft­ware and hard­ware vir­tu­al­ly. This approach reduced devel­op­ment time from decades to years.

Blue Origin’s Cloud-Native Infrastructure

Blue Ori­gin took a dif­fer­ent path, build­ing cloud-first from day one. Their IT achieve­ments include:

Dis­trib­uted Devel­op­ment: Using AWS, Blue Ori­gin cre­at­ed a devel­op­ment envi­ron­ment that enables engi­neers across the coun­try to col­lab­o­rate on the same dig­i­tal mod­els in real-time. Their New Glenn rock­et was designed entire­ly in the cloud, elim­i­nat­ing the need for phys­i­cal mock­ups until late in the devel­op­ment process.

API-Dri­ven Archi­tec­ture: Every Blue Ori­gin sys­tem expos­es APIs, allow­ing rapid inte­gra­tion of new capa­bil­i­ties. When NASA required mod­i­fi­ca­tions to the lunar lan­der, Blue Orig­in’s IT archi­tec­ture enabled design changes to be imple­ment­ed in weeks rather than months.

Traditional Defense IT Challenges: The Weight of History

Legacy System Burden

The Mis­sile Defense Agency oper­ates sys­tems with roots stretch­ing back to the 1960s—some com­po­nents trace their lin­eage to the orig­i­nal SAGE air defense sys­tem. These aren’t just old; they’re archae­o­log­i­cal lay­ers of tech­nol­o­gy that have been built upon each oth­er over decades.

Pro­gram­ming Lan­guage Archae­ol­o­gy: Crit­i­cal MDA sys­tems still run FORTRAN code writ­ten dur­ing the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion. The Navy’s Aegis Com­bat Sys­tem con­tains mil­lions of lines of ADA code—a lan­guage the Pen­ta­gon man­dat­ed in the 1980s but which com­mer­cial indus­try large­ly aban­doned. Find­ing pro­gram­mers who can main­tain these sys­tems is like find­ing black­smiths; they exist, but they’re expen­sive and increas­ing­ly rare.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion Decay: Sys­tem doc­u­men­ta­tion is scat­tered across mul­ti­ple clas­si­fi­ca­tion lev­els and resides in dif­fer­ent net­works that can’t com­mu­ni­cate with each oth­er. A sin­gle sys­tem might have its require­ments on SIPR, tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions on JWICS, and oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures on unclas­si­fied net­works. Engi­neers spend more time hunt­ing for doc­u­men­ta­tion or try­ing to reverse-engi­neer lega­cy sys­tems than they do modernizing.

Hard­ware Depen­den­cies: Many lega­cy sys­tems depend on hard­ware that’s no longer man­u­fac­tured (or made in the Unit­ed States). The Air Force main­tains a “bone yard” of spare parts for sys­tems that com­pa­nies stopped sup­port­ing decades ago. When crit­i­cal com­po­nents fail, tech­ni­cians some­times can­ni­bal­ize muse­um pieces to repair oth­er equipment.

Policy Barriers to Evolution

Fed­er­al Acqui­si­tion Reg­u­la­tion (FAR) Con­straints: The FAR’s empha­sis on “low­est price tech­ni­cal­ly accept­able” often favors con­trac­tors who promise to main­tain exist­ing sys­tems rather than replace them. Mod­ern­iza­tion appears riski­er and more expen­sive com­pared to incre­men­tal patches.

FISMA Com­pli­ance Bur­den: The Fed­er­al Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty Man­age­ment Act requires exten­sive doc­u­men­ta­tion and test­ing for any sys­tem change. Upgrad­ing a lega­cy sys­tem to mod­ern stan­dards can trig­ger FISMA reviews that take longer than the orig­i­nal devel­op­ment, cre­at­ing per­verse incen­tives to avoid modernization.

NIST Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Frame­work: While nec­es­sary, the frame­work often con­flicts with lega­cy sys­tem archi­tec­tures. Imple­ment­ing mod­ern secu­ri­ty con­trols on 1980s-era sys­tems is like installing airbags in a Mod­el T—technically pos­si­ble but eco­nom­i­cal­ly questionable.

Stovepiped Data: The Tower of Babel Problem

Each ser­vice built its IT infra­struc­ture to solve its own prob­lems, cre­at­ing incom­pat­i­ble islands of capability:

Air Force: Built around air oper­a­tions cen­ters designed for cen­tral­ized com­mand and con­trol. Their sys­tems excel at man­ag­ing air­space but strug­gle with real-time data shar­ing out­side their domain.

Navy: Devel­oped ship-cen­tric sys­tems opti­mized for blue-water oper­a­tions. Aegis was designed when ships oper­at­ed inde­pen­dent­ly; net­work­ing mul­ti­ple plat­forms requires exten­sive workarounds.

Space Force: Inher­it­ed a mix of Air Force sys­tems and spe­cial­ized space oper­a­tions tools. They’re try­ing to cre­ate uni­fied space domain aware­ness while man­ag­ing dozens of incom­pat­i­ble ground systems.

MDA: Oper­ates as a joint agency but relies on ser­vice-spe­cif­ic net­works and pro­to­cols. Their sys­tems must trans­late between Air Force, Navy, and Army data for­mats in real-time.

Policy-Driven Fragmentation

Gold­wa­ter-Nichols Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quences: The 1986 Act improved joint oper­a­tions but inad­ver­tent­ly rein­forced the devel­op­ment of ser­vice-spe­cif­ic IT sys­tems. Each ser­vice main­tained sep­a­rate “Title 10” respon­si­bil­i­ties, includ­ing its own IT systems.

Com­pe­ti­tion in Con­tract­ing Act (CICA): CICA’s require­ment for com­pet­i­tive bid­ding often pre­vents ser­vices from adopt­ing each oth­er’s suc­cess­ful solu­tions. If the Air Force devel­ops an effec­tive sys­tem, the Navy must still com­pete with it rather than sim­ply adopt­ing it.

COIN-Era Technical Debt

Between 2001 and 2021, the Depart­ment of Defense focused intense­ly on coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tions. This was­n’t just a strate­gic shift—it was an IT trans­for­ma­tion that cre­at­ed last­ing tech­ni­cal debt:

Tac­ti­cal Over Strate­gic: DoD invest­ed heav­i­ly in tac­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions and intel­li­gence sys­tems for small-unit oper­a­tions. Strate­gic sys­tems, such as mis­sile defense, received main­te­nance fund­ing but lit­tle invest­ment in modernization.

Com­mer­cial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Addic­tion: COIN oper­a­tions demand­ed rapid deploy­ment of new capa­bil­i­ties. DoD became addict­ed to COTS solu­tions that worked imme­di­ate­ly but cre­at­ed long-term inte­gra­tion nightmares.

Net­work Pro­lif­er­a­tion: Each the­ater spawned its own networks—CENTRIXS for coali­tion oper­a­tions, SIPR for clas­si­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and JWICS for top-secret data. These net­works could­n’t talk to each oth­er by design, but the iso­la­tion became permanent.

The Compounding Effect

These chal­lenges don’t exist in isolation—they rein­force each other:

1. Lega­cy sys­tems resist inte­gra­tion, rein­forc­ing stovepipes
2. Stovepipes pre­vent mod­ern­iza­tion pressure
3. Tech­ni­cal debt accu­mu­lates with each patch and workaround
4. Poli­cies writ­ten for old­er tech­nolo­gies become bar­ri­ers to new­er approaches

The result is an IT envi­ron­ment where change is expen­sive, risky, and slow—the oppo­site of what Gold­en Dome requires. This under­scores the urgent need for mod­ern­iza­tion in our defense systems.

Barrier Analysis: Why IT Modernization Stalls

The Middle Management Firewall

The most sig­nif­i­cant bar­ri­er isn’t technical—it’s human. Mid­dle man­agers who built careers on lega­cy sys­tems often resist change. They’re not obstruc­tion­ist by nature; they’re pro­tect­ing what works while remain­ing skep­ti­cal of unproven alternatives.

Pro­gram man­agers jug­gle hun­dreds of require­ments doc­u­ments but lack mod­ern project man­age­ment tools. They rely on Pow­er­Point and Excel because that’s what their review­ers expect. Intro­duc­ing agile devel­op­ment or DevSec­Ops requires chang­ing not just tools but entire work­flows.  (Author’s Note:  I am not ful­ly con­vinced that JIRA is the fix action tool for mod­ern DevSec­Ops either.)

Architectural Opacity

Gold­en Dome’s lack of OV‑1 (Oper­a­tional View) and OV‑2 doc­u­men­ta­tion cre­ates cas­cad­ing IT prob­lems. With­out clear archi­tec­ture dia­grams show­ing data flows and sys­tem inter­ac­tions, con­trac­tors build incom­pat­i­ble solu­tions. Each inter­cep­tor type might use dif­fer­ent data for­mats, com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­cols, and secu­ri­ty frameworks.

This opac­i­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly impacts IT plan­ning. How can you design net­works, data­bas­es, and pro­cess­ing sys­tems with­out know­ing what con­nects to what? Com­mer­cial com­pa­nies start with archi­tec­ture; Gold­en Dome appears to be design­ing it retroactively.

Security Theater vs. Security Engineering

Clas­si­fi­ca­tion require­ments cre­ate IT night­mares. Sys­tems that should share data can’t because they oper­ate at dif­fer­ent clas­si­fi­ca­tion lev­els. The irony is that com­mer­cial satel­lites often col­lect bet­ter imagery than clas­si­fied sys­tems, but inte­grat­ing that data requires months of secu­ri­ty reviews.

Adaptation Strategies: Bridging the Gap

Immediate IT Wins

Con­tainer­iza­tion: Deploy appli­ca­tions in con­tain­ers that work across dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments. If SpaceX soft­ware can run on a rock­et, it can run in a DoD data center.

API Man­dates: Require all Gold­en Dome con­trac­tors to expose APIs. No more pro­pri­etary inter­faces that lock in ven­dors and pre­vent integration.

Cloud-First Devel­op­ment: New sys­tems should be born in the cloud, even if they even­tu­al­ly run on-premis­es. This neces­si­tates mod­ern archi­tec­ture deci­sions, with the under­stand­ing that data cen­ters must be host­ed on U.S.-controlled instal­la­tions. Host­ing on U.S.-controlled instal­la­tions means that, regard­less of the JWCC solu­tion, it will allow the Depart­ment of War to place cloud capa­bil­i­ties in over­seas locations.

Cultural Transformation

Dig­i­tal Natives in Lead­er­ship: Pro­mote offi­cers and civil­ians who under­stand mod­ern IT. The Space Force is already doing this—their youngest ser­vice mem­bers have grown up with the tech­nol­o­gy and eas­i­ly grasp the concepts.

Com­mer­cial Rota­tions: Assign defense IT per­son­nel to work at SpaceX, Blue Ori­gin, or lead­ing IT solu­tion providers for six months. They’ll return with new per­spec­tives and contacts.

Fail Fast Per­mis­sions: Cre­ate sand­box­es where teams can exper­i­ment with­out fear of career dam­age. SpaceX blows up rock­ets to learn; DoD should blow up bad IT ideas ear­ly and cheap­ly, hence the need for Dig­i­tal Twin envi­ron­ments to experiment.

Architectural Transparency

Open Stan­dards: Man­date the use of open stan­dards for all Gold­en Dome com­mu­ni­ca­tions. If com­mer­cial com­pa­nies can build com­pat­i­ble sys­tems, com­pe­ti­tion increas­es, and costs decrease.

Dig­i­tal Thread Require­ments: Every Gold­en Dome com­po­nent must con­tribute to a dig­i­tal thread—a com­plete data pic­ture from sen­sor to shoot­er. Dig­i­tal Thread requires stan­dard­ized data for­mats and real-time shar­ing, increas­ing effi­cien­cy in oth­er aspects of the kill chain.

Policy Recommendations: Making IT Innovation Possible

Acquisition Reform

Mod­u­lar Con­tract­ing: Break mas­sive pro­grams into small­er IT chunks. Instead of hav­ing one con­trac­tor build every­thing, let spe­cial­ists com­pete for spe­cif­ic pieces. SpaceX did­n’t build Star­link’s user ter­mi­nals; they part­nered with experts to devel­op them.

Per­for­mance-Based Pay­ments: Pay for IT out­comes, not effort. If a sys­tem suc­cess­ful­ly shares data with part­ners, the con­trac­tor receives pay­ment. If inte­gra­tion fails, they fix it at their own expense.

Regulatory Relief

Commercial Data Rights: Balancing Innovation and Investment Protection

The cur­rent data rights frame­work forces an arti­fi­cial choice: either the gov­ern­ment gets unlim­it­ed rights and con­trac­tors lose com­mer­cial incen­tives, or con­trac­tors retain rights, and the gov­ern­ment can’t effec­tive­ly inte­grate sys­tems. Gold­en Dome needs a third option.

The Inno­va­tion Dilem­ma: Com­mer­cial space com­pa­nies invest bil­lions in R&D because they can com­mer­cial­ize their inno­va­tions, gen­er­at­ing sig­nif­i­cant returns. Tra­di­tion­al defense con­trac­tors accept lim­it­ed com­mer­cial rights because they’re com­pen­sat­ed through cost-plus con­tracts. The Gold­en Dome requires rapid com­mer­cial inno­va­tion, with defense inte­gra­tion requirements.

Pro­posed Dual-Rights Frame­work:

1. Com­mer­cial Rights Retained: Con­trac­tors keep full intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights for com­mer­cial ver­sions of their tech­nol­o­gy. SpaceX can sell Star­link glob­al­ly while pro­vid­ing Starshield to the DoD.
2. Gov­ern­ment Rights Guar­an­teed: The DoD is grant­ed unlim­it­ed rights to use, mod­i­fy, and inte­grate defense-spe­cif­ic ver­sions of the soft­ware. This includes access to source code, mod­i­fi­ca­tion rights, and the abil­i­ty to have oth­er con­trac­tors main­tain systems.
3. Tech­nol­o­gy Trans­fer Incen­tives: Cre­ate tax incen­tives for com­pa­nies that devel­op dual-use tech­nolo­gies. If a com­pa­ny’s com­mer­cial invest­ment ben­e­fits defense appli­ca­tions, it should receive R&D tax cred­its pro­por­tion­al to the defense benefit.

Spe­cif­ic Imple­men­ta­tion Mech­a­nisms:

1. Mod­u­lar IP Archi­tec­ture: Require con­trac­tors to sep­a­rate core com­mer­cial tech­nol­o­gy from defense-spe­cif­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions. The com­mer­cial core remains pro­pri­etary; defense mod­i­fi­ca­tions become gov­ern­ment property.
2. Rev­enue Shar­ing Mod­els: For tech­nolo­gies devel­oped with gov­ern­ment fund­ing, estab­lish rev­enue-shar­ing agree­ments in which con­trac­tors pay roy­al­ties on com­mer­cial sales back to the DoD for rein­vest­ment in future programs.
3. Open Stan­dards Com­pli­ance: Man­date that all defense-spe­cif­ic mod­i­fi­ca­tions use open stan­dards for inter­faces and data for­mats. Open Stan­dard Com­pli­ance also pre­vents ven­dor lock-in while pre­serv­ing com­mer­cial IP.

Legal Frame­work Changes: This requires amend­ments to the Defense Fed­er­al Acqui­si­tion Reg­u­la­tion Sup­ple­ment (DFARS) and poten­tial­ly new leg­is­la­tion. The frame­work should be test­ed on the Gold­en Dome before being imple­ment­ed more broadly.

Organizational Changes

Joint IT Task Force: Breaking Down Institutional Barriers

The cur­rent acqui­si­tion sys­tem treats IT as a sup­port func­tion rather than a core capa­bil­i­ty. Gold­en Dome requires IT-cen­tric think­ing from the start, not as an afterthought.

Pro­posed Struc­ture: Estab­lish the Gold­en Dome Inte­gra­tion Task Force (GDITF) as a joint orga­ni­za­tion with unprece­dent­ed authority:

Mem­ber­ship and Author­i­ty:

1. Ser­vice Rep­re­sen­ta­tives: O‑6 lev­el offi­cers from Air Force, Navy, Space Force, and MDA with direct bud­get author­i­ty for their ser­vice’s Gold­en Dome contributions
2. Com­mer­cial Part­ners: Senior tech­ni­cal exec­u­tives from major con­trac­tors with deci­sion-mak­ing author­i­ty, not just liai­son officers
3. Tech­ni­cal Author­i­ty: Pow­er to man­date tech­ni­cal stan­dards, reject incom­pat­i­ble solu­tions, and real­lo­cate fund­ing between services

Oper­a­tional Frame­work:

1. Week­ly Inte­gra­tion Reviews: Manda­to­ry tech­ni­cal reviews where all par­tic­i­pants demon­strate sys­tem inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, not just a brief on progress
2. Stan­dards Enforce­ment: Author­i­ty to reject any sys­tem that does­n’t meet inte­gra­tion stan­dards, regard­less of ser­vice pref­er­ences or con­trac­tor relationships
3. Bud­get Real­lo­ca­tion: Abil­i­ty to move fund­ing from non-com­pli­ant pro­grams to suc­cess­ful inte­gra­tion efforts

Deci­sion-Mak­ing Process:

1. Con­sen­sus Build­ing: Tech­ni­cal deci­sions require agree­ment from both gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial representatives
2. Esca­la­tion Author­i­ty: Dis­putes that can’t be resolved at the task force lev­el go direct­ly to the Sec­re­tary of Defense, bypass­ing tra­di­tion­al ser­vice channels
3. Rapid Pro­to­typ­ing Bud­get: $500 mil­lion annu­al bud­get for rapid inte­gra­tion exper­i­ments and proof-of-con­cept demonstrations

Suc­cess Met­rics:

1. Inte­gra­tion Speed: Time from con­cept to work­ing pro­to­type across ser­vice boundaries
2. Cost Effi­cien­cy: Reduc­tion in dupli­cat­ed efforts and incom­pat­i­ble systems
3. Tech­ni­cal Per­for­mance: Demon­strat­ed inter­op­er­abil­i­ty in real­is­tic test scenarios

CTO Empowerment: Technical Leadership with Real Authority

Tra­di­tion­al pro­gram man­age­ment focus­es on sched­ule and bud­get com­pli­ance. The Gold­en Dome needs tech­ni­cal lead­er­ship that can make archi­tec­tur­al deci­sions with imme­di­ate imple­men­ta­tion authority.

Pro­posed Gold­en Dome CTO Struc­ture:

Report­ing Rela­tion­ship: The CTO reports direct­ly to Gen. Michael Guetlein (Gold­en Dome pro­gram direc­tor) with a direct line to the Sec­re­tary of Defense for tech­ni­cal dis­putes. This bypass­es tra­di­tion­al acqui­si­tion hier­ar­chies that slow tech­ni­cal decisions.

Bud­get Author­i­ty: The CTO con­trols a $2 bil­lion annu­al bud­get specif­i­cal­ly for:

1. Inte­gra­tion Tech­nolo­gies: Soft­ware, net­works, and data sys­tems that con­nect Gold­en Dome components
2. Rapid Pro­to­typ­ing: Quick-turn devel­op­ment of crit­i­cal capabilities
3. Com­mer­cial Part­ner­ships: Direct con­tracts with inno­v­a­tive com­pa­nies for spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal solutions

Tech­ni­cal Author­i­ty: The CTO has veto pow­er over any tech­ni­cal deci­sion that affects sys­tem inte­gra­tion, including:

1. Inter­face Stan­dards: All Gold­en Dome sys­tems must use CTO-approved interfaces
2. Data For­mats: Stan­dard­ized data for­mats across all sen­sors, proces­sors, and weapons systems
3. Secu­ri­ty Archi­tec­tures: Uni­fied approach to cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and infor­ma­tion assurance

Staffing Mod­el: The CTO office should include:

1. Tech­ni­cal Direc­tors: Senior engi­neers from each ser­vice, plus com­mer­cial indus­try rotations
2. Inte­gra­tion Teams: Mixed gov­ern­ment-con­trac­tor teams focused on spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal challenges
3. Inno­va­tion Labs: Ded­i­cat­ed facil­i­ties for rapid pro­to­typ­ing and test­ing new concepts

Per­for­mance Met­rics: The CTO’s suc­cess should be mea­sured by:

1. Sys­tem Inte­gra­tion Speed: Time to achieve inter­op­er­abil­i­ty between new components
2. Tech­ni­cal Risk Reduc­tion: Ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and mit­i­ga­tion of inte­gra­tion challenges
3. Inno­va­tion Adop­tion: Rate of com­mer­cial tech­nol­o­gy inte­gra­tion into defense systems

Imple­men­ta­tion Time­line: The CTO posi­tion should be estab­lished with­in 90 days, with full staffing and bud­get author­i­ty to be imple­ment­ed with­in six months. The des­ig­na­tion of the Gold­en Dome of Amer­i­ca’s CTO requires imme­di­ate action to avoid fur­ther delays in Gold­en Dome development.

Legal and Pol­i­cy Frame­work: This struc­ture requires new DoD direc­tives estab­lish­ing the CTO’s author­i­ty and poten­tial­ly leg­is­la­tion to ensure bud­get con­trol across ser­vice bound­aries. The posi­tion should be mod­eled on suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial CTOs who have both tech­ni­cal exper­tise and busi­ness authority.

These expand­ed rec­om­men­da­tions address the fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge fac­ing Gold­en Dome: how to achieve com­mer­cial-speed inno­va­tion with­in defense acqui­si­tion con­straints. Suc­cess requires not just new poli­cies but new orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures that pri­or­i­tize tech­ni­cal inte­gra­tion over tra­di­tion­al bureau­crat­ic processes.

The Path Forward

Gold­en Dome can suc­ceed where Strate­gic Defense Ini­tia­tive failed, but only if we learn from the com­mer­cial space sec­tor. The tech­nol­o­gy exists—SpaceX tracks thou­sands of objects simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, Blue Ori­gin sim­u­lates entire mis­sions dig­i­tal­ly, and both iter­ate faster than tra­di­tion­al defense con­trac­tors thought possible.

The real chal­lenge is insti­tu­tion­al. We must con­vince mid­dle man­agers that change strength­ens rather than threat­ens their posi­tions. We need acqui­si­tion offi­cials who under­stand APIs as well as cost-plus con­tracts. Most crit­i­cal­ly, we need IT archi­tec­tures that assume inte­gra­tion from the start, not as an afterthought.

The com­mer­cial space indus­try proved that infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy can trans­form hard­ware indus­tries. Gold­en Dome’s suc­cess depends not on build­ing bet­ter inter­cep­tors, but on build­ing bet­ter sys­tems to con­trol them. The ques­tion isn’t whether DoD can adapt com­mer­cial IT innovations—it’s whether we can do it fast enough to matter.

Time is not on our side. While we debate require­ments, adver­saries deploy capa­bil­i­ties. While we pro­tect lega­cy sys­tems, threats evolve beyond their capa­bil­i­ties. Gold­en Dome rep­re­sents our chance to leap ahead, but only if we’re will­ing to leave out­dat­ed IT approach­es behind.

The blue­print exists in Hawthorne and Kent, where SpaceX and Blue Ori­gin build the future. The only ques­tion is whether the Pen­ta­gon is ready to fol­low it.

October 13, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Cheat Sheet: Dream Chaser Pivots to Defense as China Flexes Orbital Muscles

Team, here with your week­ly space indus­try roundup. This past week brought about sig­nif­i­cant shifts in the com­mer­cial space land­scape, from Sier­ra Space’s sur­pris­ing piv­ot away from ISS mis­sions to Chi­na’s increas­ing­ly bold demon­stra­tions of space sur­veil­lance capa­bil­i­ties. Let’s dive into what’s been hap­pen­ing above our heads.

Dream Chaser Changes Course

In what I’d call the week’s biggest strate­gic shift, Sier­ra Space announced it’s no longer plan­ning to send its Dream Chas­er space­plane to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion for car­go runs. Instead, they’re piv­ot­ing hard toward nation­al secu­ri­ty mis­sions. NASA and Sier­ra Space have mod­i­fied their Com­mer­cial Resup­ply Ser­vices 2 con­tract, orig­i­nal­ly signed in 2016, which includ­ed sev­en car­go mis­sions to the ISS.

Now, Dream Chas­er will con­duct a sin­gle test flight in late 2026, which will not dock with the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. How­ev­er, NASA retains the option to order car­go mis­sions at a lat­er time. What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing here is that Sier­ra Space has­n’t dis­closed any spe­cif­ic tech­ni­cal issues caus­ing the delays — the vehi­cle was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to fly last year. This piv­ot to defense appli­ca­tions sug­gests they see more lucra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties in the mil­i­tary space sec­tor, which aligns with the broad­er indus­try trend we’ve been tracking.

The Space Surveillance Chess Match Heats Up

The space domain aware­ness game between the U.S. and Chi­na took some fas­ci­nat­ing turns this week. Chi­nese com­pa­ny Chang­guang Satel­lite Tech­nol­o­gy pub­lished images of Maxar’s World­view Legion 2 satel­lite, tak­en by their Jilin‑1 space­craft from a dis­tance of 40–55 kilo­me­ters. This appears to be a direct response to Maxar’s pub­li­ca­tion of images of Chi­na’s Shi­jian-26 exper­i­men­tal satel­lite in July.

But it did­n’t stop there. Chi­na’s Shiyan-12 (02) inspec­tor satel­lite maneu­vered with­in 60 kilo­me­ters of a U.S. Space-Based Infrared Sys­tem (SBIRS) mis­sile warn­ing satel­lite ear­li­er this month, posi­tion­ing itself for opti­mal imag­ing. These tit-for-tat demon­stra­tions show­case both nations’ grow­ing capa­bil­i­ties in what I refer to as “orbital recon­nais­sance.” Frankly, it’s a trend that’s only going to intensify.

Space Force Doubles Down on Speed and Flexibility

At the Air & Space Forces Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence, Chief of Space Oper­a­tions Gen. Chance Saltz­man deliv­ered some hard truths about acqui­si­tion reform. His mes­sage was clear: the Space Force needs to pri­or­i­tize speed over per­fec­tion when acquir­ing new sys­tems. With Chi­na rapid­ly advanc­ing its space war­fare capa­bil­i­ties, includ­ing its push toward reusable launch vehi­cles, Saltz­man empha­sized the need to accept “imper­fect solu­tions that can help troops today rather than wait­ing for flaw­less systems.”

The Space Force also announced that its next-gen­er­a­tion space domain aware­ness satel­lites (the RG-XX pro­gram) will be equipped for on-orbit refueling—a first for an offi­cial acqui­si­tion pro­gram. By allow­ing its space domain aware­ness satel­lites to refu­el, it enables satel­lites to maneu­ver more freely with­out wor­ry­ing about fuel con­straints (think of this as a refu­el­ing tanker refu­el­ing a fight­er jet while on a mis­sion). The Space Force is tar­get­ing an RFP by the end of the year, with mul­ti­ple ven­dors expect­ed to compete.

Commercial Space Momentum Continues

The invest­ment cycle remains hot, with sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant developments:

Plan­et Labs con­tin­ues to prove that space busi­ness­es can gen­er­ate cash flow, post­ing their sec­ond straight quar­ter of pos­i­tive free cash flow. Their stock is up 205% year-to-date, dri­ven by a 20% year-over-year rev­enue increase and a mas­sive 245% surge in back­log to $736 mil­lion. The geopo­lit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty is clear­ly dri­ving demand for Earth obser­va­tion capabilities.

Star­lab Space took a major step for­ward, select­ing Vivace Corp. to man­u­fac­ture the pri­ma­ry struc­ture of its com­mer­cial space sta­tion at NASA’s Michoud Assem­bly Facil­i­ty in New Orleans. With an 8‑meter diam­e­ter (just shy of SLS’s core stage), Star­lab is bet­ting big — lit­er­al­ly — on pro­vid­ing 40% of the ISS’s pres­sur­ized vol­ume when it launch­es in 2029.

Fire­fly Aero­space earned an extra $10 mil­lion from NASA for deliv­er­ing addi­tion­al data from their Blue Ghost lunar mis­sion, includ­ing the first HD images of a solar eclipse from the lunar sur­face. They col­lect­ed near­ly 120 giga­bytes of data and sur­vived tem­per­a­ture swings from 230°F to ‑275°F dur­ing a solar eclipse.

Launch Updates and Technical Achievements

SpaceX main­tained its relent­less launch cadence, com­plet­ing three launch­es in just 41 hours — includ­ing a NASA sci­ence mis­sion car­ry­ing IMAP, the Car­ruthers Geo­coro­na Obser­va­to­ry, and NOAA’s Space Weath­er Fol­low On L1 mis­sion to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point.

Blue Ori­gin remains the sole bid­der for NASA’s VIPER lunar rover deliv­ery, secur­ing a $190 mil­lion task order to land it at the Moon’s south pole in late 2027. The lack of com­pe­ti­tion here is note­wor­thy, sug­gest­ing that either tech­ni­cal chal­lenges or busi­ness case con­cerns are deter­ring oth­er providers from enter­ing the market.

Looking Ahead

The Artemis 2 mis­sion could launch as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary 5, 2026, with the crew nam­ing their Ori­on space­craft “Integri­ty.” NASA’s mak­ing sol­id progress on prelaunch prepa­ra­tions, although the Aero­space Safe­ty Advi­so­ry Pan­el warned that SpaceX’s Star­ship lunar lan­der for Artemis 3 could be “years late” based on their recent vis­it to Starbase.

Ger­many announced a mas­sive 35 bil­lion euro ($41 B) invest­ment in mil­i­tary space sys­tems through 2030, cit­ing threats from Chi­na and Rus­sia. Ger­many’s invest­ment rep­re­sents one of the largest nation­al space defense invest­ments we’ve seen from a U.S. ally.

The Bottom Line

This week rein­forced sev­er­al key themes I’ve been track­ing: the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of com­mer­cial space capa­bil­i­ties, the inten­si­fy­ing com­pe­ti­tion between the U.S. and Chi­na in space domain aware­ness, and the con­tin­ued mat­u­ra­tion of the com­mer­cial space econ­o­my. Sier­ra Space’s piv­ot to defense, com­bined with the Space Force’s push for speed and flex­i­bil­i­ty, shows how nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns are reshap­ing the industry.

The space sur­veil­lance demon­stra­tions between the U.S. and Chi­na are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing from a sta­bil­i­ty per­spec­tive. As both nations devel­op increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed inspec­tion and imag­ing capa­bil­i­ties, we’re enter­ing an era where every satel­lite is poten­tial­ly under obser­va­tion. Chi­na treats its com­mer­cial base as part of its defense indus­tri­al base, while the U.S. still views it as a part­ner. The U.S. must return to a day when both are one and the same to give mil­i­tary plan­ners more options.

Mean­while, the com­mer­cial sec­tor con­tin­ues to mature, with com­pa­nies like Plan­et Labs prov­ing that sus­tain­able space busi­ness­es are pos­si­ble, even if they take 15 years to achieve prof­itabil­i­ty. The hot invest­ment cycle shows no signs of cool­ing, espe­cial­ly for com­pa­nies address­ing defense and intel­li­gence needs.

As we head into Octo­ber, keep an eye on the Space Force’s RG-XX pro­gram RFP and any respons­es to Ger­many’s mas­sive space defense invest­ment. The inter­sec­tion of com­mer­cial inno­va­tion and nation­al secu­ri­ty require­ments will con­tin­ue dri­ving the indus­try forward.

Stay tuned for next week’s update, and as always, keep look­ing up!

September 29, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly: Congressional Pushback, MDA’s $151B SHIELD Contract, and Launch Milestones

The space indus­try wit­nessed sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments this week, from Capi­tol Hill bat­tles over NASA’s flag­ship rock­et to the Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s mas­sive new con­tract­ing vehi­cle and esca­lat­ing geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions affect­ing space oper­a­tions. Here’s what busi­ness lead­ers need to know about the week’s most impact­ful events.

MDA Releases Massive $151 Billion SHIELD Contract

The week’s most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment for defense con­trac­tors came with the Mis­sile Defense Agen­cy’s release of the Scal­able Home­land Inno­v­a­tive Enter­prise Lay­ered Defense (SHIELD) con­tract vehi­cle. This stag­ger­ing 10-year, $151 bil­lion Indef­i­nite Delivery/Indefinite Quan­ti­ty (IDIQ) oppor­tu­ni­ty rep­re­sents one of the largest defense con­tracts in history.

SHIELD serves as the sec­ond major con­tract­ing vehi­cle sup­port­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive to build a lay­ered mis­sile defense sys­tem for the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States. The con­tract encom­pass­es 19+ domain areas, includ­ing pro­to­typ­ing, weapon design, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and data min­ing. Notably, com­pa­nies need expe­ri­ence in only two of these areas to qual­i­fy as IDIQ hold­ers, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er­ing bar­ri­ers to entry com­pared to tra­di­tion­al defense contracts.

The tim­ing is critical—the final Request for Pro­pos­al hit the streets before Octo­ber 1, fol­low­ing indus­try feed­back on the draft solic­i­ta­tion. This RFP rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift in how DoD approach­es acqui­si­tion, mov­ing away from tra­di­tion­al, lengthy pro­cure­ment cycles toward more agile, flex­i­ble arrange­ments that can rapid­ly issue orders across mul­ti­ple domains.

Regard­less of whether you rep­re­sent an FSI, OEM, or VAR, SHIELD presents unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and data analytics—core com­pe­ten­cies that align per­fect­ly with the con­trac­t’s scope. The low­ered entry bar­ri­ers could enable mid-tier con­trac­tors to com­pete along­side tra­di­tion­al defense primes, poten­tial­ly reshap­ing the mis­sile defense indus­tri­al base.

Congressional Battle Over Space Launch System Intensifies

Con­gress deliv­ered a sharp rebuke to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s plans to ter­mi­nate NASA’s Space Launch Sys­tem (SLS) rock­et after the Artemis III mis­sion. Texas Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz emerged as the pro­gram’s unlike­ly new cham­pi­on, craft­ing a pro­vi­sion that secured $6.7 bil­lion in fund­ing for two addi­tion­al SLS missions—Artemis IV and Artemis V—while also con­tin­u­ing con­struc­tion of the Lunar Gate­way space station.

This devel­op­ment rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant shift in space pol­i­cy dynam­ics. The orig­i­nal archi­tects of the SLS program—former sen­a­tors Bill Nel­son, Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son, and Richard Shelby—have all left office. Yet, Cruz has stepped into the breach with renewed vig­or. His moti­va­tion appears clear: beat­ing Chi­na back to the Moon and main­tain­ing Amer­i­can lunar pres­ence, which he views as achiev­able only through con­tin­ued SLS operations.

The con­gres­sion­al push­back rais­es fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the future of Amer­i­can space explo­ration strat­e­gy. It cre­ates poten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­trac­tors sup­port­ing both tra­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment pro­grams and emerg­ing com­mer­cial alternatives.

SpaceX Achieves Critical Starship Milestones

SpaceX con­tin­ued demon­strat­ing progress on its Star­ship pro­gram, with encour­ag­ing results from recent heat shield test­ing. The vehi­cle’s dis­tinc­tive orange tint after its Indi­an Ocean land­ing ini­tial­ly raised con­cerns. Still, Elon Musk clar­i­fied that the col­oration came from oxi­dized metal­lic test tiles and exposed insu­la­tion from delib­er­ate­ly removed tiles. Cru­cial­ly, the heat shield tiles remained large­ly attached—a sig­nif­i­cant advance­ment toward rapid reusability.

The com­pa­ny also received Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion approval to more than dou­ble Fal­con 9 launch­es from Space Launch Com­plex-40, increas­ing the annu­al lim­it from 50 to 120 mis­sions. This approval sup­ports SpaceX’s ambi­tious goal of 170 Fal­con 9 launch­es in 2025, main­tain­ing their dom­i­nant posi­tion in the com­mer­cial launch market.

How­ev­er, SpaceX faces logis­ti­cal chal­lenges in scal­ing Star­ship oper­a­tions. Each launch requires over 200 tanker trucks to deliv­er nec­es­sary propellants—an inef­fi­cient process the com­pa­ny plans to address through on-site cryo­genic flu­id pro­duc­tion facilities.

Defense and National Security Developments

Beyond SHIELD, the Depart­ment of Defense imple­ment­ed the final Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Matu­ri­ty Mod­el Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (CMMC) rule, requir­ing defense con­trac­tors to demon­strate prop­er safe­guard­ing of Fed­er­al Con­tract Infor­ma­tion and Con­trolled Unclas­si­fied Infor­ma­tion. This devel­op­ment sig­nif­i­cant­ly impacts space indus­try con­trac­tors, who must now achieve CMMC cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to main­tain DoD contracts.

NASA announced plans for a trio of solar obser­va­tion space­craft to launch on Sep­tem­ber 23 aboard a Fal­con 9 rock­et. The missions—IMAP, Car­ruthers Geo­coro­na Obser­va­to­ry, and SWFO-L1—will study solar wind and space weath­er effects, pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal data for pro­tect­ing satel­lites and astro­nauts from space weath­er impacts.

International Launch Activities and Competitive Dynamics

Israel suc­cess­ful­ly launched the Ofek 19 syn­thet­ic aper­ture radar satel­lite using its Shav­it 2 rock­et, demon­strat­ing con­tin­ued indige­nous space capa­bil­i­ties despite region­al secu­ri­ty chal­lenges. Cana­di­an launch com­pa­ny Reac­tion Dynam­ics made a strate­gic $1.2 mil­lion invest­ment in Mar­itime Launch Ser­vices, secur­ing access to Space­port Nova Sco­tia for its Aurora‑8 rocket.

Chi­nese com­mer­cial rock­et com­pa­ny Orien­space secured $27–124 mil­lion in Series B+ financ­ing to advance its Gravity‑2 medi­um-lift vehi­cle, capa­ble of deliv­er­ing 20 met­ric tons to low-Earth orbit. This rep­re­sents Chi­na’s con­tin­ued push into com­mer­cial launch mar­kets and pos­es increas­ing com­pe­ti­tion to West­ern providers.

Industry Infrastructure and Investment Trends

Rock­et Lab unveiled its Neu­tron launch com­plex at Vir­gini­a’s Wal­lops Island, designed to com­pete with SpaceX’s Fal­con 9 in the medi­um-lift mar­ket. How­ev­er, founder Peter Beck acknowl­edged the com­pa­ny’s aggres­sive 2025 launch time­line remains challenging.

French rock­et builder Maia­Space com­plet­ed exten­sive pro­pel­lant tank test­ing for its Maia rock­et, rep­re­sent­ing Euro­pean efforts to devel­op com­pet­i­tive com­mer­cial launch capa­bil­i­ties with the first flight tar­get­ed for 2027.

Strategic Implications for Defense Contractors

The SHIELD con­tract release fun­da­men­tal­ly alters the mis­sile defense land­scape, offer­ing unprece­dent­ed access to a $151 bil­lion mar­ket while sup­port­ing crit­i­cal nation­al secu­ri­ty objec­tives. The con­trac­t’s structure—requiring exper­tise in only two of 19+ areas—creates oppor­tu­ni­ties for spe­cial­ized firms to com­pete along­side tra­di­tion­al primes.

For com­pa­nies, the tim­ing aligns per­fect­ly with grow­ing demand for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, and data ana­lyt­ics capa­bil­i­ties across the defense sec­tor. The Gold­en Dome ini­tia­tive’s empha­sis on speed and scale favors agile con­trac­tors who can rapid­ly deliv­er inno­v­a­tive solutions.

Con­gres­sion­al resis­tance to admin­is­tra­tion space pol­i­cy changes sug­gests con­tin­ued polit­i­cal volatil­i­ty around major pro­grams, cre­at­ing both risks and oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­trac­tors sup­port­ing mul­ti­ple pro­gram port­fo­lios. The inter­na­tion­al launch sec­tor’s con­tin­ued diver­si­fi­ca­tion high­lights the need for Amer­i­can com­pa­nies to main­tain tech­no­log­i­cal and com­pet­i­tive advantages.

Looking Ahead

The com­ing weeks will bring addi­tion­al clar­i­ty on SHIELD con­tract awards, con­gres­sion­al space fund­ing pri­or­i­ties, and inter­na­tion­al com­pet­i­tive devel­op­ments. The con­ver­gence of mas­sive defense spend­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with evolv­ing space capa­bil­i­ties cre­ates a dynam­ic envi­ron­ment requir­ing strate­gic agili­ty and care­ful atten­tion to both domes­tic pol­i­cy changes and glob­al com­pet­i­tive trends.

For defense con­trac­tors and space indus­try exec­u­tives, suc­cess will require under­stand­ing how these inter­con­nect­ed developments—from SHIELD­’s unprece­dent­ed scale to inter­na­tion­al launch competition—reshape the strate­gic land­scape and cre­ate new path­ways for growth and innovation.

September 15, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Weekly: Launch Records Shatter While Military Space Takes Center Stage

Team, here with your week­ly space indus­try roundup. This past week has been absolute­ly packed with devel­op­ments that are reshap­ing both com­mer­cial and mil­i­tary space oper­a­tions. From SpaceX hit­ting triple dig­its to the Space Force prepar­ing for orbital com­bat, let’s dive into what’s been hap­pen­ing above our heads.

SpaceX Shatters Launch Records (Again)

SpaceX just crossed a mile­stone that would have seemed impos­si­ble just a few years ago — they launched their 100th Fal­con 9 rock­et of 2025 on Mon­day morn­ing from Van­den­berg Space Force Base. To put this in per­spec­tive, they hit this mark on Octo­ber 20th last year, mean­ing they’re run­ning near­ly two months ahead of their 2024 pace. At this rate, SpaceX will launch more Fal­con 9s this year than NASA flew Space Shut­tle mis­sions in three decades.

The com­pa­ny has also reas­signed about 20% of its Fal­con 9 engi­neer­ing team to work on Star­ship for the next six months, fol­low­ing three con­sec­u­tive upper stage fail­ures ear­li­er this year. Their tenth Star­ship test flight is sched­uled for today (Sun­day), with engi­neers believ­ing they’ve solved the dif­fuser issue that caused May’s fail­ure. We’ll see if Ver­sion 3 of Star­ship, expect­ed late this year or ear­ly 2026, can final­ly deliv­er on the vehi­cle’s ambi­tious promises.

Military Space Operations Enter New Era

The U.S. Space Com­mand is no longer play­ing defense. Gen­er­al Stephen Whit­ing made it crys­tal clear this week: “We now have a com­bat­ant com­mand focused on war fight­ing in space.” This shift from defen­sive to offen­sive capa­bil­i­ties marks a fun­da­men­tal change in how Amer­i­ca approach­es space security.

Last year’s joint U.S.-French satel­lite maneu­ver near a for­eign satel­lite (like­ly Russ­ian) demon­strat­ed new ren­dezvous and prox­im­i­ty oper­a­tions capa­bil­i­ties. The exer­cise was so suc­cess­ful, they’re plan­ning to repeat it lat­er this year. Mean­while, the Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office has launched over 200 satel­lites since 2023, with SpaceX report­ed­ly lead­ing the com­pe­ti­tion for a new 450-satel­lite con­stel­la­tion to track mis­sile launches.

The inte­gra­tion of AI is par­tic­u­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing — Space Com­mand has built “Space­Bot,” a large lan­guage mod­el trained on oper­a­tional data that can com­plete tasks “at machine speed” that pre­vi­ous­ly required ten peo­ple and five hours.

International Launch Developments

The glob­al launch land­scape con­tin­ues to evolve rapid­ly. Fire­fly Aero­space signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Japan’s Space Cotan to study launch­ing their Alpha rock­et from Hokkai­do Space­port, which would give them access to the Asian satel­lite mar­ket and pro­vide redun­dan­cy for U.S. allies.

Chi­na’s space ambi­tions faced a set­back when Land­Space’s Zhuque-2E Y2 methane rock­et failed dur­ing an upper stage anom­aly, los­ing four Guowang inter­net satel­lites. Despite this, Chi­na suc­cess­ful­ly test-fired its Long March 10 rock­et’s cen­ter core with sev­en YF-100K engines, keep­ing them on track for crewed lunar mis­sions before 2030. They’ve also approved devel­op­ment of the Long March 10B vari­ant, and Bei­jing-based Ark­tech secured fund­ing for their mas­sive Glacier‑1 rock­et capa­ble of lift­ing 40,000 kg to LEO.

In Europe, Avio gained a 10-year license to oper­ate Vega rock­ets from French Guiana inde­pen­dent­ly of Ari­ane­space. At the same time, Ari­ane 6 com­plet­ed its third launch, deploy­ing the MetOp-SG-A1 weath­er satellite.

Major Industry Moves and Funding

True Anom­aly raised $260 mil­lion in Series C fund­ing (mix of equi­ty and debt) to devel­op space­craft for nation­al secu­ri­ty mis­sions. The com­pa­ny plans four mis­sions over the next 18 months and will grow from 170 to 250 employees.

Rock­et Lab com­plet­ed its $275 mil­lion acqui­si­tion of Geost, expand­ing its role as a defense con­trac­tor with elec­tro-opti­cal and infrared sen­sor capa­bil­i­ties. Spin­Launch secured $30 mil­lion for its Merid­i­an Space broad­band con­stel­la­tion, sup­ple­ment­ing April’s $12 mil­lion from Kongs­berg Defence and Aerospace.

On the ser­vices side, Amen­tum began work on the $4 bil­lion Space Force Range Con­tract after com­peti­tor RGNext dropped its legal chal­lenge. They’re tasked with mod­ern­iz­ing launch ranges to han­dle high­er launch rates.

Policy Shifts and Controversies

NASA’s act­ing admin­is­tra­tor Sean Duffy cre­at­ed waves by stat­ing the agency would “move aside” Earth sci­ence pri­or­i­ties in favor of explo­ration. In his Fox Busi­ness inter­view on August 14th, Duffy specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed: “All of the cli­mate sci­ence and all of the oth­er pri­or­i­ties that the last admin­is­tra­tion had at NASA, we’re going to move aside. All of the sci­ence that we do is going to be direct­ed towards explo­ration, which is the mis­sion of NASA. That’s why we have NASA, is to explore, not to do all of these Earth sci­ences.” This shift would rep­re­sent a major shift for NASA since Earth sci­ence — includ­ing cli­mate mon­i­tor­ing — has been a core NASA mis­sion since the agen­cy’s found­ing. In fact, the 1958 law that cre­at­ed NASA lists as its first objec­tive “the expan­sion of human knowl­edge of the Earth and of phe­nom­e­na in the atmos­phere and space.”

In oth­er news, the Air Nation­al Guard’s trans­fer to the Space Force remains con­tentious. Despite Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2024 cam­paign promise to cre­ate a Space Nation­al Guard, the trans­fer of 578 posi­tions begins on Octo­ber 1st. A Col­orado sur­vey showed only 8 of 101 space oper­a­tors were will­ing to trans­fer full-time, high­light­ing the resis­tance to this reorganization.

In the UK, it has announced plans to fold its own Space Agency into the Depart­ment for Sci­ence, Inno­va­tion, and Tech­nol­o­gy by April 2026, rais­ing indus­try con­cerns about reduced vis­i­bil­i­ty into space spending.

Looking Ahead: Space-Based Solar Power

A new study from King’s Col­lege Lon­don and Xi’an Jiao­tong Uni­ver­si­ty sug­gests space-based solar pow­er could pro­vide 80% of Europe’s renew­able ener­gy by 2050. The research ana­lyzed NASA’s heliosat swarm and pla­nar array designs, find­ing poten­tial cost sav­ings of 7–15% com­pared to ground-based solar, plus a two-thirds reduc­tion in bat­tery require­ments due to con­sis­tent pow­er generation.

Notable Launches and Milestones

The X‑37B space­plane launched on its eighth mis­sion Thurs­day night aboard a Fal­con 9, car­ry­ing exper­i­ments includ­ing laser com­mu­ni­ca­tions and quan­tum iner­tial sen­sors. The pre­vi­ous mis­sion last­ed 908 days, and no dura­tion has been announced for this flight.

In a his­toric first, Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents launched Canada’s first space rock­et in 25 years with their Star­sailor vehi­cle. How­ev­er, it sep­a­rat­ed ear­li­er than planned and did­n’t reach the Kár­mán line.

The Bottom Line

This week per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the cur­rent state of the space indus­try — com­mer­cial com­pa­nies are achiev­ing unprece­dent­ed launch cadences. In con­trast, mil­i­tary space oper­a­tions open­ly embrace offen­sive capa­bil­i­ties. The inte­gra­tion of AI, the push toward reusabil­i­ty across mul­ti­ple providers, and the con­tin­ued inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion for lunar land­ing capa­bil­i­ties all point to an indus­try that’s matur­ing rapid­ly while still push­ing boundaries.

As we watch Star­ship’s tenth test flight and mon­i­tor the ongo­ing Nation­al Guard inte­gra­tion debates, one thing is clear: space is no longer just about explo­ration and sci­ence. It’s about nation­al secu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness, and increas­ing­ly, the infra­struc­ture that will define the next cen­tu­ry of human activ­i­ty both on and off Earth.

Until next time, keep look­ing up!

August 31, 2025  Leave a comment