Austin's Thoughts

Space Industry Cheat Sheet: Blue Origin Lands, China Stumbles, and Golden Dome Takes Flight

This week remind­ed me why I enjoy work­ing in the defense and space sec­tors. We wit­nessed his­to­ry in the mak­ing, strate­gic piv­ots that will reshape entire indus­tries, and the kind of tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs that sep­a­rate lead­ers from fol­low­ers. Let me walk you through what hap­pened and why it mat­ters for our future.

Blue Origin Finally Joins the Big Leagues

Thurs­day after­noon marked a mon­u­men­tal shift in the space indus­try. Blue Orig­in’s New Glenn rock­et, after years of obser­va­tion, final­ly achieved what many thought was impos­si­ble: a suc­cess­ful land­ing on a float­ing plat­form 375 miles off Cape Canaver­al. This was­n’t just a tech­ni­cal feat; it was a tes­ta­ment to human inge­nu­ity and determination.

Pic­ture this: an 18-sto­ry rock­et, weigh­ing as much as a small build­ing, exe­cut­ing a con­trolled descent through clouds before gen­tly touch­ing down on a foot­ball field-sized deck bob­bing in the Atlantic. The pre­ci­sion required is stag­ger­ing, and Blue Ori­gin nailed it on just their sec­ond attempt.

“We achieved full mis­sion suc­cess today, and I am so proud of the team,” said CEO Dave Limp, and you could hear the relief and pride in his voice. SpaceX has done this 532 times, but until Thurs­day, they were the only game in town for recov­er­ing orbital-class boosters.

What makes this par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant for our indus­try is Blue Orig­in’s role in the Defense Depart­men­t’s launch provider com­pe­ti­tion. They’re now posi­tioned along­side SpaceX and Unit­ed Launch Alliance as a cer­ti­fied mil­i­tary launch provider, giv­ing the Pen­ta­gon the com­pe­ti­tion and redun­dan­cy it des­per­ate­ly needs.

The New Glen­n’s sev­en BE‑4 engines per­formed flaw­less­ly, gen­er­at­ing over 3.8 mil­lion pounds of thrust. These are the same engines that will pow­er Unit­ed Launch Alliance’s Vul­can rock­et, cre­at­ing an inter­est­ing dynam­ic where Blue Ori­gin is both com­peti­tor and sup­pli­er to oth­er launch providers.

Mars Gets a New Roadmap

The New Glen­n’s mis­sion was­n’t just about reach­ing orbit. It car­ried with it the poten­tial to rev­o­lu­tion­ize Mars explo­ration. The ESCAPADE mis­sion, nes­tled in the rock­et’s pay­load bay, is pio­neer­ing a flex­i­ble tra­jec­to­ry that could rede­fine how we approach inter­plan­e­tary logis­tics, poten­tial­ly open­ing up new avenues for exploration.

Here’s the bril­liant part: the twin space­craft will park at Lagrange Point 2 for a year, essen­tial­ly cre­at­ing a stag­ing area for Mars mis­sions. This approach could solve one of our biggest chal­lenges in space explo­ration. These nar­row launch win­dows cre­ate bot­tle­necks and dri­ve up costs.

As some­one who has spent years ana­lyz­ing mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties, this is a game-chang­er. Sup­pose we can launch Mars mis­sions over extend­ed peri­ods rather than cram­ming every­thing into brief win­dows. In that case, we dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase our oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty and reduce risk.

China’s Space Program Shows Its Vulnerabilities

While Chi­na cel­e­brat­ed break­ing its own launch record with 70 suc­cess­ful mis­sions this year, it also revealed a crit­i­cal weak­ness. Three Chi­nese astro­nauts returned to Earth on Fri­day, but not in the space­craft they had launched. Space debris cracked the win­dow of their Shen­zhou 20 cap­sule, forc­ing them to swap vehi­cles in orbit and return in the new­er Shen­zhou 21.

This left three astro­nauts cur­rent­ly aboard Chi­na’s Tian­gong sta­tion with only a dam­aged space­craft as their emer­gency escape pod. It’s a sober­ing reminder that space is an unfor­giv­ing envi­ron­ment, and even minor debris can cre­ate major oper­a­tional challenges.

From a strate­gic stand­point, this inci­dent under­scores the grow­ing prob­lem of space debris, which pos­es a threat to all space-far­ing nations. It’s not just an envi­ron­men­tal issue; it’s a nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cern that demands imme­di­ate atten­tion and action to safe­guard our space-based capabilities.

Golden Dome: From Concept to Reality

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense ini­tia­tive is tran­si­tion­ing from con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion to hard­ware devel­op­ment, with pro­found impli­ca­tions. This $75 bil­lion pro­gram is not just about defend­ing against bal­lis­tic mis­siles; it’s about estab­lish­ing Amer­i­can dom­i­nance in the strate­gic high ground of space, with far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for nation­al defense.

The Space Force issued pro­to­type requests in Sep­tem­ber, with com­pa­nies now devel­op­ing space-based inter­cep­tors under Oth­er Trans­ac­tion Author­i­ty con­tracts. These aren’t tra­di­tion­al cost-plus arrange­ments; they’re com­pet­i­tive, per­for­mance-based con­tracts that reward inno­va­tion and speed.

What excites me most about Gold­en Dome is its inte­gra­tion approach. Rather than build­ing a stand­alone sys­tem, it’s designed to work with exist­ing plat­forms, such as Aegis, THAAD, and Patri­ot sys­tems. This cre­ates a lay­ered defense that can engage threats from boost phase through ter­mi­nal intercept.

The tech­ni­cal chal­lenges are immense. These space-based inter­cep­tors require pro­tec­tion from cyber­at­tacks, elec­tron­ic jam­ming, and kinet­ic threats. They need com­mand and con­trol sys­tems that can make split-sec­ond deci­sions across thou­sands of miles. They also need to be cost-effec­tive enough to be deployed in mean­ing­ful numbers.

The Army Gets Serious About Space

The Army’s reor­ga­ni­za­tion of its Space and Mis­sile Defense Com­mand is a clear sig­nal of a fun­da­men­tal shift in the mil­i­tary’s approach to ground war­fare. By absorb­ing two Air and Mis­sile Defense Com­mands, the Army is acknowl­edg­ing that space capa­bil­i­ties are not just addi­tion­al assets; they are now mis­sion-crit­i­cal requirements.

Com­man­der Sean Gainey made a point that I did not con­sid­er: the Army is the largest con­sumer of space capa­bil­i­ties. Every pre­ci­sion fire mis­sion, every com­mu­ni­ca­tion link, every nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem depends on space-based assets. The Army’s new 40D Mil­i­tary Occu­pa­tion­al Spe­cial­ty for space oper­a­tions rec­og­nizes this reality.

This trans­for­ma­tion also reflects the admin­is­tra­tion’s renewed focus on home­land defense. The 263rd AAMDC pro­tects the Nation­al Cap­i­tal Region, while the 32nd pro­vides glob­al capa­bil­i­ties with home­land appli­ca­tions. It’s a smart orga­ni­za­tion­al move that cre­ates syn­er­gies while main­tain­ing oper­a­tional flexibility.

Industry Implications and Market Dynamics

Rock­et Lab’s deci­sion to delay Neu­tron’s debut to 2026 demon­strates the kind of dis­ci­plined approach that builds long-term suc­cess. CEO Peter Beck­’s focus on reach­ing orbit rather than meet­ing arbi­trary dead­lines demon­strates that he under­stands that in this busi­ness, fail­ure isn’t just expen­sive; it’s poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic for one’s reputation.

Var­da Space Indus­tries is scal­ing up its space man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties, oper­at­ing two space­craft simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for the first time. They’re book­ing flights into 2027, dri­ven by com­pa­nies seek­ing alter­na­tives to the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. This rep­re­sents a fun­da­men­tal shift from gov­ern­ment-dom­i­nat­ed space uti­liza­tion to com­mer­cial space services.

The Strategic Picture

What we’re wit­ness­ing is the mat­u­ra­tion of the com­mer­cial space indus­try, coin­cid­ing with renewed great pow­er com­pe­ti­tion. Chi­na’s record launch pace demon­strates its com­mit­ment to space dom­i­nance. At the same time, Amer­i­ca’s response com­bines gov­ern­ment pro­grams, such as Gold­en Dome, with com­mer­cial inno­va­tion from com­pa­nies like Blue Ori­gin and SpaceX.

The inte­gra­tion of com­mer­cial capa­bil­i­ties with nation­al secu­ri­ty mis­sions is cre­at­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. Com­pa­nies that can nav­i­gate both com­mer­cial mar­kets and gov­ern­ment require­ments will thrive. Those who can’t will find them­selves marginalized.

These devel­op­ments cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties in sys­tems inte­gra­tion, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, and data ana­lyt­ics. The Gold­en Dome pro­gram alone will require sophis­ti­cat­ed com­mand and con­trol sys­tems, threat assess­ment algo­rithms, and real-time deci­sion-mak­ing capabilities.

Looking Forward

The space indus­try is at an inflec­tion point. We’re mov­ing from an era of gov­ern­ment-led explo­ration to com­mer­cial-dri­ven expan­sion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly prepar­ing for poten­tial con­flicts that extend beyond Earth­’s atmos­phere. The com­pa­nies and nations that mas­ter this tran­si­tion will shape the next cen­tu­ry of human development.

Last week’s events, from Blue Orig­in’s his­toric land­ing to Chi­na’s chal­lenges in space sta­tion devel­op­ment, remind us that space is both human­i­ty’s great­est oppor­tu­ni­ty and its most demand­ing envi­ron­ment. Suc­cess requires not just tech­no­log­i­cal excel­lence, but strate­gic think­ing, oper­a­tional dis­ci­pline, and the abil­i­ty to adapt quick­ly to chang­ing circumstances.

That’s what makes this indus­try so com­pelling, and why I remain opti­mistic about Amer­i­ca’s abil­i­ty to lead in this new frontier.

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

Clin­ton Austin is a Senior Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor for Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, cov­er­ing the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Space Force, and the Mis­sile Defense Agency.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the offi­cial pol­i­cy or posi­tion of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Technology.

November 17, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Cheat Sheet: Government Shutdown Ripples Through Launch Schedules While Mega-Deals Reshape the Sector

The space indus­try faced a week of con­trasts as gov­ern­ment dys­func­tion col­lid­ed with pri­vate sec­tor momen­tum. While the ongo­ing fed­er­al shut­down cre­at­ed oper­a­tional headaches for launch providers and con­trac­tors, bil­lion-dol­lar deals and strate­gic acqui­si­tions con­tin­ued to reshape the com­mer­cial space landscape.

Launch Operations Feel the Shutdown Squeeze

The most imme­di­ate impact of the gov­ern­ment shut­down, now stretch­ing into its sec­ond month, hit the launch sec­tor hard. The FAA announced Thurs­day that com­mer­cial launch­es would be restrict­ed to night­time hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. local time start­ing Mon­day, Novem­ber 10. This unprece­dent­ed move aims to reduce strain on an air traf­fic con­trol sys­tem strug­gling with unpaid con­trollers who are increas­ing­ly fail­ing to report for work.

For an indus­try that has grown accus­tomed to flex­i­ble launch win­dows, this restric­tion cre­ates sig­nif­i­cant oper­a­tional chal­lenges. SpaceX’s upcom­ing Fal­con 9 mis­sions next week will need to adjust their sched­ules. Blue Orig­in’s sec­ond New Glenn launch, car­ry­ing NASA Mars space­craft and sched­uled for Sun­day at 2:45 p.m. East­ern, could face delays if any tech­ni­cal issues push it past the deadline.

The tim­ing could­n’t be worse for Blue Ori­gin, which has momen­tum fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful sta­t­ic-fire test of its sec­ond New Glenn rock­et on Octo­ber 30th. The com­pa­ny con­duct­ed an unusu­al­ly long 38-sec­ond test of the vehi­cle’s sev­en BE‑4 first-stage engines at Launch Com­plex 36, demon­strat­ing con­fi­dence in the sys­tem ahead of the crit­i­cal NG‑2 mission.

Spectrum Wars: EchoStar and SpaceX Strike Another Multi-Billion Dollar Deal

In a pat­tern of strate­gic spec­trum con­sol­i­da­tion, EchoStar announced on Thurs­day that it would sell anoth­er chunk of valu­able wire­less spec­trum to SpaceX for $2.6 bil­lion. This fol­lows their mas­sive $17 bil­lion deal in Sep­tem­ber, with the lat­est trans­ac­tion involv­ing 15 mega­hertz of nation­wide AWS‑3 uplink spec­trum licenses.

What makes this deal par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is the pay­ment struc­ture. SpaceX will pay entire­ly in stock, fur­ther inter­twin­ing the for­tunes of these two space indus­try giants. EchoStar’s new divi­sion, EchoStar Cap­i­tal, will man­age these equi­ty hold­ings and pur­sue what the com­pa­ny refers to as “asset-light” growth oppor­tu­ni­ties. This strate­gic piv­ot sug­gests that EchoStar sees more val­ue in own­ing a stake in SpaceX’s future than in hold­ing onto its spec­trum assets.

The spec­trum will enhance SpaceX’s direct-to-device ser­vices across the Unit­ed States, a mar­ket that’s rapid­ly becom­ing the next fron­tier for satel­lite oper­a­tors. With tra­di­tion­al satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions fac­ing pric­ing pres­sure, the abil­i­ty to con­nect direct­ly to stan­dard smart­phones rep­re­sents a mas­sive growth opportunity.

Government Spending Cuts Hit Earth Observation Sector

Black­Sky’s third-quar­ter earn­ings paint­ed a stark pic­ture of how gov­ern­ment bud­get bat­tles affect com­mer­cial space com­pa­nies. The satel­lite imagery provider report­ed rev­enues of $19.6 mil­lion, miss­ing ana­lyst expec­ta­tions due to pro­ject­ed cuts in the Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office’s Elec­tro-Opti­cal Com­mer­cial Lay­er (EOCL) program.

How­ev­er, Black­Sky’s sto­ry isn’t all doom and gloom. Inter­na­tion­al sales have surged to rep­re­sent about half of total rev­enue, up from 40% a year ago. This shift reflects grow­ing glob­al demand for high-res­o­lu­tion and infrared imagery from Black­Sky’s new Gen‑3 satel­lites. The com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to piv­ot toward inter­na­tion­al cus­tomers demon­strates the impor­tance of mar­ket diver­si­fi­ca­tion in an era of unpre­dictable gov­ern­ment spending.

Consolidation Continues: Intuitive Machines Acquires Satellite Manufacturing Capability

Lunar lan­der devel­op­er Intu­itive Machines made a strate­gic move to ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grate its oper­a­tions by acquir­ing Lanteris Space Sys­tems, for­mer­ly known as Maxar Space Sys­tems. This acqui­si­tion pro­vides Intu­itive Machines with in-house satel­lite man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties, poten­tial­ly reduc­ing costs and enhanc­ing con­trol over its lunar mis­sion hardware.

The deal reflects a broad­er trend of space com­pa­nies seek­ing to con­trol more of their sup­ply chain. As the lunar econ­o­my devel­ops, com­pa­nies that can build, launch, and oper­ate com­plete sys­tems will have sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages over those rely­ing on exter­nal suppliers.

SES-Intelsat Merger Shows Growing Pains

The long-await­ed merg­er between Euro­pean satel­lite oper­a­tor SES and Amer­i­can firm Intel­sat is show­ing ear­ly signs of inte­gra­tion chal­lenges. SES report­ed year-to-date rev­enues of €1.75 bil­lion ($2.02 bil­lion) in its first quar­ter­ly report, which includ­ed Intel­sat’s oper­a­tions. Still, the num­bers fell short of ana­lyst expectations.

Despite adding €1.4 bil­lion in new con­tract val­ue and main­tain­ing a healthy €7.1 bil­lion back­log, the com­bined com­pa­ny expe­ri­enced a 1.8% year-over-year decline in rev­enue. The gov­ern­ment shut­down is adding to their woes, with com­pa­ny lead­er­ship warn­ing of delays to con­tract awards and renewals that could push rev­enue recog­ni­tion into next year.

The mar­ket’s reac­tion was swift and harsh, with SES stock drop­ping 16% on the news. This drop sug­gests investors remain skep­ti­cal about the merg­er’s abil­i­ty to cre­ate val­ue in a rapid­ly chang­ing satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions market.

International Developments: China Faces Space Debris Challenge

Chi­na’s human space­flight pro­gram encoun­tered an unex­pect­ed chal­lenge as space debris forced a delay in the Shen­zhou-20 crew’s return to Earth. The crew had com­plet­ed their six-month mis­sion aboard the Tian­gong space sta­tion and hand­ed over oper­a­tions to the Shen­zhou-21 crew on Novem­ber 4. Still, a sus­pect­ed debris impact has post­poned their landing.

This inci­dent high­lights the grow­ing chal­lenge of orbital debris, even for major space pow­ers. As more coun­tries and com­pa­nies launch satel­lites, man­ag­ing space traf­fic and debris becomes increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal for safe operations.

Mean­while, Europe’s space pro­gram achieved suc­cess with Ari­ane 6, which launched the Sen­tinel-1D radar imag­ing satel­lite from French Guiana. The mis­sion demon­strates Europe’s con­tin­ued com­mit­ment to Earth obser­va­tion capa­bil­i­ties for appli­ca­tions rang­ing from agri­cul­ture to flood monitoring.

Policy Concerns: American Space Leadership Under Pressure

FCC Com­mis­sion­er Anna Gomez (D) raised alarm bells about declin­ing Amer­i­can influ­ence in inter­na­tion­al space gov­er­nance. Speak­ing at the Econ­o­mist Space Sum­mit, she warned that the elim­i­na­tion of pro­grams like USAID could weak­en Amer­i­ca’s “soft pow­er,” just as crit­i­cal deci­sions regard­ing satel­lite spec­trum loom at the 2027 World Radio­com­mu­ni­ca­tion Conference.

Her con­cerns come as Pres­i­dent Trump ® renom­i­nat­ed Jared Isaac­man to lead NASA, a move wel­comed by much of the space indus­try, despite the five-month gap since his orig­i­nal nom­i­na­tion was with­drawn. Andy Lap­sa, CEO of launch start­up Stoke Space, praised the deci­sion at the same sum­mit, call­ing it “a great nom­i­na­tion” for NASA and the coun­try. How­ev­er, Isaac­man faces ques­tions about his posi­tions in a recent pol­i­cy man­i­festo and must nav­i­gate pro­posed sci­ence bud­get cuts of up to 50%, which he has already called less than “opti­mal.”

These devel­op­ments reflect grow­ing anx­i­eties about main­tain­ing Amer­i­can space lead­er­ship amid domes­tic polit­i­cal tur­moil. With oth­er nations poten­tial­ly exploit­ing any per­ceived weak­ness to block U.S. pri­or­i­ties, the stakes for Amer­i­can space pol­i­cy have nev­er been higher.

Looking Ahead: Rideshare Revolution Accelerates

As we look ahead to next week, Exo­launch is prepar­ing for its largest mis­sion yet on SpaceX’s Trans­porter-15 rideshare flight. The Ger­man launch inte­gra­tor will man­age 58 satel­lites from over 30 cus­tomers across 16 coun­tries, demon­strat­ing the mat­u­ra­tion of the small satel­lite launch market.

Exo­launch’s growth sto­ry is remark­able. Hav­ing deployed 595 satel­lites across all launch providers to date, the com­pa­ny will pass the 650 mark with this mis­sion and plans to deploy hun­dreds more next year. Their strat­e­gy of acquir­ing avail­able capac­i­ty through 2028 demon­strates con­fi­dence in the con­tin­ued growth of the small satel­lite market.

The Bottom Line

This week per­fect­ly encap­su­lat­ed the cur­rent state of the space indus­try: pri­vate sec­tor dynamism strug­gling against gov­ern­ment dys­func­tion. While bil­lion-dol­lar deals and strate­gic acqui­si­tions demon­strate the con­tin­ued vital­i­ty of the com­mer­cial space indus­try, the gov­ern­ment shut­down’s impact on launch­es and con­tracts high­lights the indus­try’s con­tin­ued depen­dence on sta­ble fed­er­al operations.

As we move for­ward, com­pa­nies that can nav­i­gate both com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties and gov­ern­ment chal­lenges will be best posi­tioned for suc­cess. The abil­i­ty to diver­si­fy rev­enue streams, as Black­Sky has done with inter­na­tion­al sales, or to inte­grate oper­a­tions, as Intu­itive Machines is pur­su­ing ver­ti­cal­ly, will become increas­ing­ly impor­tant sur­vival strategies.

The space indus­try has always required patience and deep pock­ets, but adding polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty to tech­ni­cal chal­lenges makes the path to prof­itabil­i­ty even more com­plex. Yet, with SpaceX pay­ing for spec­trum with stock and com­pa­nies plan­ning launch­es for years, the long-term opti­mism about space’s com­mer­cial poten­tial remains unshak­en. The ques­tion isn’t whether the space econ­o­my will grow, but whether gov­ern­ment dys­func­tion will slow that growth enough for inter­na­tion­al com­peti­tors to catch up.

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

Clin­ton Austin is a Senior Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor for Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy who cov­ers the U.S. Air Force and Space.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the offi­cial pol­i­cy or posi­tion of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Technology.

 

November 10, 2025  Leave a comment

Space Industry Cheat Sheet: Golden Dome Takes Shape as NASA Leadership Drama Unfolds

Team, here is your week­ly Space Indus­try Cheat Sheet. In the past week, it has solid­i­fied my opin­ion that the chal­lenges the Unit­ed States faces are not tech­ni­cal, but rather a lack of uni­ty. There have been updates to the Gold­en Dome of Amer­i­ca effort (which has its own set of pros and cons), NASA lead­er­ship bat­tles, and crit­i­cal advance­ments in com­mer­cial space capa­bil­i­ties. Let’s dive into what’s shap­ing our nation’s space future.

Golden Dome Initiative Gains Momentum

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s ambi­tious Gold­en Dome mis­sile defense shield con­tin­ues to take shape, with SpaceX emerg­ing as the like­ly prime con­trac­tor for the MILNET satel­lite con­stel­la­tion. Accord­ing to sources famil­iar with the pro­gram, SpaceX could build up to 600+ satel­lites designed to track hyper­son­ic mis­siles, air­craft, and drones that threat­en the U.S. and the West­ern Hemisphere.

SpaceX has demon­strat­ed and con­tin­ues to inno­vate, out­pac­ing its com­pe­ti­tion at a remark­able rate, which leaves the oth­ers in the Defense Indus­try Base scram­bling. Lat­er in this arti­cle, I will dis­cuss SpaceX’s part­ner­ship with MTN to devel­op its own pri­vate­ly secured net­works, along with the increased capa­bil­i­ty of Device-to-Device (D2D) tech­nol­o­gy, which puts direct pres­sure on Viasat and com­pa­nies that offer Irid­i­um services. 

SpaceX is one of the hand­ful of com­pa­nies that are poised to excel at the com­plex­i­ty and speed of the Gold­en Dome of Amer­i­ca pro­gram. Kevin Flood from Ansys Gov­ern­ment Ini­tia­tives explained in a Break­ing Defense arti­cle that the U.S. effort will exceed any­thing we’ve attempt­ed before, includ­ing Israel’s Iron Dome sys­tem. The chal­lenges are immense because the DoD is over­com­ing its tech­ni­cal debt. Still, it is reimag­in­ing mis­sile defense for threats that can maneu­ver unpre­dictably at hyper­son­ic speeds.

Intrigu­ing­ly, the empha­sis is on sim­u­la­tion and open sys­tems archi­tec­ture. Unlike tra­di­tion­al defense pro­grams with rigid require­ments, Gold­en Dome is being designed for con­tin­u­ous adap­ta­tion. This approach allows the U.S. to test against threats that don’t yet exist and rapid­ly inte­grate com­mer­cial inno­va­tions as they emerge. 

NASA Leadership Crisis Deepens

Mean­while, the same com­pa­ny slat­ed to build the 600+ satel­lites for the DoD Gold­en Dome, SpaceX, is pick­ing a fight with NASA’s lead­er­ship. The bat­tle between inter­im admin­is­tra­tor Sean Duffy and for­mer nom­i­nee Jared Isaac­man has erupt­ed into pub­lic view, with Elon Musk call­ing Duffy “Sean Dum­my” after the inter­im chief crit­i­cized SpaceX’s Star­ship delays on nation­al television.

This Wash­ing­ton dra­ma has real impli­ca­tions for our space pro­gram. NASA is already down 20% of its work­force, and indus­try rumors sug­gest that morale with­in the agency is at an all-time low, coin­cid­ing with the Unit­ed States’ race against Chi­na to return to the Moon. To add to the dra­ma, both for­mer NASA admin­is­tra­tors, Char­lie Bold­en and Jim Briden­s­tine, have expressed skep­ti­cism that our cur­rent approach can beat Chi­na’s 2030 lunar land­ing target.

The most con­cern­ing devel­op­ment? Duffy has pro­posed mov­ing NASA under the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, which would fun­da­men­tal­ly alter the agen­cy’s inde­pen­dence and poten­tial­ly politi­cize it fur­ther. As some­one who has watched this indus­try for years, this kind of uncer­tain­ty is exact­ly what Chi­na wants to see. Addi­tion­al­ly, do astro­nauts receive TSA Pre-Check automatically? 

Commercial Space Advances

Despite the polit­i­cal tur­moil, the com­mer­cial space sec­tor con­tin­ues to inno­vate at break­neck speed. Some notable devel­op­ments this week:

Star­link Goes Pri­vate: MTN launched StarEdge Hori­zon. This ser­vice enables busi­ness­es to uti­lize Star­link satel­lites as part of pri­vate­ly secured net­works, with­out rely­ing on the pub­lic inter­net. This Lay­er 2 archi­tec­ture is already see­ing strong demand from ener­gy, con­struc­tion, and logis­tics com­pa­nies. As stat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly in the arti­cle, this could also have a mil­i­tary application.

Direct-to-Device Break­through: AST Space­Mo­bile secured a mas­sive win with Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s stc Group, includ­ing a $175 mil­lion pre­pay­ment for a 10-year agree­ment. This puts them along­side AT&T and Ver­i­zon in the race to pro­vide satel­lite con­nec­tiv­i­ty direct­ly to smartphones.

Space Sur­veil­lance Evo­lu­tion: Aus­tralian com­pa­ny HEO demon­strat­ed the grow­ing impor­tance of space-to-space imag­ing by reveal­ing pre­vi­ous­ly unknown details about Chi­na’s mys­te­ri­ous XJY‑7 satel­lite. They’ve now con­duct­ed over 4,000 imag­ing mis­sions of space­craft, high­light­ing how space is becom­ing increas­ing­ly transparent.

Defense Industrial Base Updates

The space indus­try’s role in nation­al defense con­tin­ues to expand. Rep. Pat Fal­lon, Chair­man of the House Armed Ser­vices Sub­com­mit­tee on Mil­i­tary Per­son­nel, has been instru­men­tal in push­ing through the FY26 NDAA with its 3.8% mil­i­tary pay increase. His focus on tran­si­tion­ing ser­vice mem­bers into the defense indus­tri­al base is par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant as we need skilled per­son­nel for pro­grams like Gold­en Dome.

Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty has final­ly moved from after­thought to pri­or­i­ty. Indus­try lead­ers at the Mil­Sat Sym­po­sium acknowl­edged that the days of treat­ing cyber­se­cu­ri­ty as option­al are over. With grow­ing threats to space sys­tems, encryp­tion and secu­ri­ty mea­sures are now mis­sion-crit­i­cal, despite the added costs.

International Developments

Japan suc­cess­ful­ly launched its next-gen­er­a­tion HTV-X1 car­go space­craft to the ISS, fea­tur­ing 50% more car­go capac­i­ty than its pre­de­ces­sor. Chi­na reaf­firmed its goal of land­ing on the Moon by 2030 while adopt­ing a more com­mer­cial approach to space devel­op­ment. And in Europe, Air­bus, Leonar­do, and Thales announced “Project Bro­mo,” a joint ven­ture com­bin­ing their space busi­ness­es into a €7.5 bil­lion annu­al rev­enue powerhouse.

Legal Battles and Political Maneuvering

Col­orado has filed suit against the Trump admin­is­tra­tion over the relo­ca­tion of Space Com­mand to Alaba­ma, argu­ing that the pres­i­den­t’s stat­ed reason—Colorado’s use of a mail-in vot­ing system—violates the Tenth Amend­ment. The com­mand rep­re­sents 1,400 jobs and $1 bil­lion in annu­al eco­nom­ic impact for Col­orado Springs.

Looking Ahead

As we head into the final weeks of 2025, sev­er­al crit­i­cal ques­tions remain:

1. Can Gold­en Dome deliv­er on its promis­es? The tech­ni­cal chal­lenges are immense, but the open archi­tec­ture approach and com­mer­cial part­ner­ships offer hope.
2. Who will lead NASA? The Duffy-Isaac­man bat­tle needs to be resolved soon, or the U.S. risks ced­ing lunar lead­er­ship to China.
3. Will com­mer­cial space con­tin­ue its momen­tum? Despite polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty, com­pa­nies like SpaceX, Blue Ori­gin, and new­er entrants con­tin­ue push­ing boundaries.

The space indus­try stands at a cross­roads. We have the tech­nol­o­gy, tal­ent, and resources to main­tain Amer­i­can lead­er­ship in space. What we need now is a clear vision, sta­ble lead­er­ship, and the polit­i­cal will to see these pro­grams through to com­ple­tion. The next few months will be crit­i­cal in deter­min­ing whether we rise to meet these chal­lenges or allow bureau­crat­ic infight­ing to hand­i­cap our efforts.

Stay tuned for next week’s update as we con­tin­ue track­ing these devel­op­ments. The space race isn’t just about nation­al pres­tige any­more — it’s about eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, nation­al secu­ri­ty, and human­i­ty’s future among the stars.

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

Clin­ton Austin is a Senior Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor for Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy who cov­ers the U.S. Air Force and Space.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect the offi­cial pol­i­cy or posi­tion of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Infor­ma­tion Technology.

November 3, 2025  Leave a comment

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