Space Industry Weekly Wrap: DoD’s Resilient Comms Push, NASA-Russia Thaw, and China’s Rapid Acceleration

Hey Team, here is your week­ly space indus­try brief­ing. What I’ve been track­ing this week are devel­op­ments that paint a pic­ture of an indus­try increas­ing­ly dri­ven by nation­al secu­ri­ty pri­or­i­ties — from major DoD con­tracts to diplo­mat­ic break­throughs, and some game-chang­ing part­ner­ships that could reshape how we man­age risks both in space and on Earth.

DoD Doubles Down on Resilient Space Communications

The Space Force made waves this week with its Pro­tect­ed Tac­ti­cal Sat­com-Glob­al (PTS‑G) pro­gram, award­ing $37.2 mil­lion across five com­pa­nies — Boe­ing, Northrop Grum­man, Viasat, Intel­sat (now part of SES), and Astra­nis. But here’s what makes this sig­nif­i­cant: it’s just the open­ing sal­vo in a pro­gram with a $4 bil­lion ceiling.

The urgency behind PTS‑G became crys­tal clear when you con­sid­er what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine. GPS jam­ming has cre­at­ed dead zones that extend to LEO — that’s right, inter­fer­ence pow­er­ful enough to affect satel­lites in orbit. The DoD’s solu­tion? A fre­quen­cy-hop­ping wave­form (PTW) that essen­tial­ly plays musi­cal chairs with fre­quen­cies to sneak encrypt­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions past jammers.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing from a busi­ness per­spec­tive is the accel­er­at­ed time­line. The Space Force scrapped its inter­me­di­ate PTS-Resilience pro­gram in Jan­u­ary to piv­ot direct­ly to the glob­al solu­tion. They want pro­duc­tion space­craft ready to launch by 2028, with the 2026 bud­get already allo­cat­ing $572 mil­lion for the entire PTS pro­gram. When DoD moves this fast and with this much mon­ey, you know they’re tak­ing the threat seriously.

Breaking the Ice: NASA and Roscosmos Leaders to Meet

In what could sig­nal a sig­nif­i­cant shift in space diplo­ma­cy, NASA Act­ing Admin­is­tra­tor Sean Duffy is set to meet with Roscos­mos Direc­tor Gen­er­al Dmit­ry Bakanov this week, mark­ing the first face-to-face meet­ing between the agen­cies’ lead­ers since Octo­ber 2018. The meet­ing, coin­cid­ing with the Crew-11 launch, comes as Duffy empha­sizes main­tain­ing U.S.-Russia part­ner­ships in space despite what he calls “wild dis­agree­ment” over Ukraine.

This diplo­mat­ic thaw is par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy giv­en the ongo­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenges aboard the ISS. That per­sis­tent air leak in the Russ­ian Zvez­da mod­ule? It’s still there, despite recent repair attempts. Roscos­mos Deputy Direc­tor Sergei Krikalev con­firmed the leak con­tin­ues at a reduced rate, with NASA and Russ­ian experts col­lab­o­rat­ing to under­stand the mod­ule’s struc­tur­al issues. It’s a reminder that in space, physics does­n’t care about geopol­i­tics — and nei­ther should crit­i­cal safe­ty collaborations.

The Moon’s Sustainability Crisis: Are We Creating a Lunar Junkyard?

Here’s some­thing that should con­cern every busi­ness exec­u­tive eye­ing lunar oppor­tu­ni­ties: We might be turn­ing the Moon into an off-world garbage dump before we even estab­lish a prop­er pres­ence there. With com­mer­cial lunar mis­sions ramp­ing up — Fire­fly just scored its fourth NASA lunar lan­der con­tract worth $176.7 mil­lion for a 2029 south pole mis­sion — experts are sound­ing alarms about sustainability.

The chal­lenge? There’s no con­sen­sus on what “lunar sus­tain­abil­i­ty” even means. MIT’s Afreen Sid­diqi, lead­ing a NASA-fund­ed study, found the space com­mu­ni­ty split between those focused on estab­lish­ing a per­ma­nent human pres­ence and those pri­or­i­tiz­ing envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion for sci­en­tif­ic research. Mean­while, dead lan­ders are pil­ing up on the lunar sur­face like mon­u­ments to our ambi­tions — or expen­sive lit­ter, depend­ing on your perspective.

For­mer NASA pol­i­cy chief Char­i­ty Wee­den put it blunt­ly: “It’s crit­i­cal not to mess up, because you don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly get a sec­ond chance.” As some­one who’s spent decades in strate­gic plan­ning for defense appli­ca­tions, I can tell you this is exact­ly the kind of for­ward-think­ing we need more of in the industry.

Government Contracts Drive Industry Growth

The gov­ern­men­t’s role as anchor ten­ant con­tin­ues to reshape the industry:

SES’s Strate­gic Piv­ot: The satel­lite oper­a­tor report­ed a 21% surge in gov­ern­ment rev­enue to €153 mil­lion ($175 mil­lion) in Q2, now rep­re­sent­ing a third of total rev­enues. CEO Adel Al-Saleh says they’re approach­ing $1 bil­lion in annu­al gov­ern­ment rev­enue — all while their tra­di­tion­al media busi­ness slides 13.6%. The mes­sage is clear: if you’re not sell­ing to gov­ern­ments, you’re miss­ing the growth market.

NRO Embraces Com­mer­cial Imagery: Albe­do secured a Stage 2 con­tract from the Nation­al Recon­nais­sance Office for its Clarity‑1 satel­lite, which deliv­ers 10-cen­time­ter res­o­lu­tion imagery from very low Earth orbit. This fol­lows the broad­er trend of intel­li­gence agen­cies lever­ag­ing com­mer­cial capa­bil­i­ties rather than build­ing every­thing in-house.

Earth Obser­va­tion for Nation­al Secu­ri­ty: The suc­cess­ful launch of NISAR (NASA-ISRO Syn­thet­ic Aper­ture Radar) rep­re­sents a $1.5 bil­lion invest­ment in Earth obser­va­tion with clear dual-use poten­tial. With the abil­i­ty to detect sur­face changes small­er than a quar­ter-inch and gen­er­ate 80 ter­abytes of data dai­ly, this capa­bil­i­ty has obvi­ous appli­ca­tions for both cli­mate sci­ence and nation­al security.

Launch Industry Reality Check: Survival of the Fittest

The launch sec­tor’s bru­tal shake­out con­tin­ues. Aus­trali­a’s Gilmour Space Tech­nolo­gies learned this first­hand when their Eris rock­et bare­ly cleared the tow­er before crash­ing back to Earth just 14 sec­onds after liftoff. Despite the fail­ure, they’re call­ing it valu­able data col­lec­tion, though I sus­pect their investors might use dif­fer­ent terminology.

The stark real­i­ty? Only Rock­et Lab and Fire­fly Aero­space have suc­cess­ful­ly reached orbit among recent launch star­tups not backed by bil­lion­aires. Even Fire­fly­’s track record is mixed, with only two ful­ly suc­cess­ful launch­es out of six attempts. Yet they’re push­ing ahead with an IPO that could val­ue the com­pa­ny at $5.5 bil­lion, set­ting a price range of $35–39 per share.

Game-Changing Commercial Applications

While defense dri­ves the big con­tracts, inno­v­a­tive com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions are emerging:

Fire Intel­li­gence Rev­o­lu­tion: Oro­raT­e­ch USA’s part­ner­ship with Opter­rix to pro­vide real-time wild­fire data to insur­ers is exact­ly the kind of prac­ti­cal space appli­ca­tion that dri­ves ROI. With USAA as the pilot cus­tomer and the recent Pal­isades Fire demon­strat­ing the urgent need, this could trans­form how insur­ers man­age wild­fire risk. Their Pine Grove con­stel­la­tion going oper­a­tional this year, fol­lowed by eight more satel­lites, shows they’re seri­ous about scaling.

Data Infra­struc­ture Evo­lu­tion: The KSAT-AWS part­ner­ship aims to inte­grate ground sta­tion capa­bil­i­ties across 200+ anten­nas at 40 loca­tions, deliv­er­ing satel­lite data to cus­tomers with­in 10 min­utes of task­ing. This kind of infra­struc­ture is what enables the real-time appli­ca­tions that both com­mer­cial and gov­ern­ment cus­tomers increas­ing­ly demand.

China’s Space Ambitions: Full Speed Ahead

While we’re debat­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, Chi­na is accel­er­at­ing its space capa­bil­i­ties across mul­ti­ple fronts:

• Com­mer­cial Over­sight: New qual­i­ty con­trol reg­u­la­tions for com­mer­cial space projects sig­nal Chi­na’s sec­tor is matur­ing rapid­ly, though high­er com­pli­ance bur­dens could slow some progress
• Lunar Hard­ware: Qui­et but steady progress on the Long March 10A rock­et, with struc­tur­al tests com­plet­ed and rumors of a sev­en-engine sta­t­ic fire test com­ing soon
• Satel­lite Inter­net: The Guowang con­stel­la­tion added more satel­lites, bring­ing the total to 39 since Decem­ber 2024, with plans for 400 by 2027

The mes­sage is clear: Chi­na isn’t wait­ing for inter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus on any­thing. They’re build­ing capa­bil­i­ties now and fig­ur­ing out the rules later.

These devel­op­ments — from DoD’s urgent push for resilient com­mu­ni­ca­tions to Chi­na’s aggres­sive time­line — point to a fun­da­men­tal shift in how the space indus­try oper­ates. It’s no longer about leisure­ly explo­ration; it’s about rapid capa­bil­i­ty deploy­ment in an increas­ing­ly con­test­ed domain.

Looking Ahead: Strategic Implications

From my per­spec­tive, ana­lyz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties at the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy and nation­al defense, sev­er­al crit­i­cal trends are emerg­ing that will shape invest­ment and strate­gic deci­sions in the com­ing years:

1. Resilience is Non-Nego­tiable: The PTS‑G pro­gram’s $4 bil­lion ceil­ing sends a clear mes­sage — DoD will pay what­ev­er it takes for sys­tems that work in con­test­ed envi­ron­ments. Every com­pa­ny pitch­ing to gov­ern­ment cus­tomers needs to answer one fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: “What hap­pens when the adver­sary jams, hacks, or shoots at your sys­tem?” If you don’t have a good answer, you don’t have a viable product.
2. The Gov­ern­ment Gravy Train Has Lim­its: Yes, SES’s piv­ot to gov­ern­ment con­tracts is smart, giv­en their 21% rev­enue growth in that sec­tor. But here’s the catch — every­one else sees the same oppor­tu­ni­ty. As more com­pa­nies chase fed­er­al dol­lars, com­pe­ti­tion will inten­si­fy and mar­gins will com­press. The win­ners will be those who can deliv­er unique capa­bil­i­ties, not just me-too solutions.
3. Chi­na’s Time­line is Our Time­line: With Guowang rac­ing toward 400 satel­lites by 2027. Their lunar pro­gram is advanc­ing steadi­ly, we’re not com­pet­ing against their cur­rent capa­bil­i­ties — we’re com­pet­ing against where they’ll be in 3–5 years. Com­pa­nies and investors need to plan accord­ing­ly. Incre­men­tal improve­ments won’t cut it; we need leap-ahead technologies.
4. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Will Become Manda­to­ry: The lunar sus­tain­abil­i­ty debate might seem aca­d­e­m­ic now, but mark my words. With­in five years, we’ll see manda­to­ry sus­tain­abil­i­ty require­ments for lunar mis­sions. Smart com­pa­nies will get ahead of this curve, build­ing in end-of-life dis­pos­al plans and resource-shar­ing pro­to­cols before reg­u­la­tors force their hand.
5. Com­mer­cial Suc­cess Requires Gov­ern­ment Foun­da­tion: The harsh real­i­ty from the launch sec­tor — only Rock­et Lab and Fire­fly sur­viv­ing among non-bil­lion­aire-backed star­tups — teach­es a cru­cial les­son. Pure com­mer­cial plays are incred­i­bly risky. The sus­tain­able path for­ward com­bines gov­ern­ment anchor con­tracts with com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions. Oro­raT­e­ch’s mod­el of serv­ing both insur­ers and (inevitably) gov­ern­ment agen­cies for wild­fire mon­i­tor­ing shows the way.
6. Speed Beats Per­fec­tion in the New Space Race: The Space Force killing PTS‑R to accel­er­ate PTS‑G demon­strates a fun­da­men­tal shift in acqui­si­tion phi­los­o­phy. In an envi­ron­ment where threats evolve month­ly, not year­ly, get­ting 80% solu­tions deployed quick­ly beats 100% solu­tions deliv­ered late. Com­pa­nies still oper­at­ing on tra­di­tion­al aero­space time­lines will find them­selves left behind.

The space indus­try is at an inflec­tion point. It’s no longer about the romance of explo­ration or the promise of space tourism. It’s about deliv­er­ing crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties for nation­al secu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness, and plan­e­tary resilience. Com­pa­nies that under­stand this shift and can exe­cute with urgency will define the next decade of space commerce.

Those still pitch­ing Pow­er­Points about colonies on Mars while ignor­ing the urgent needs of gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es here on Earth? They’ll join the grow­ing grave­yard of space dreams that nev­er quite made it to orbit.

Until next week, keep look­ing up.

August 4, 2025

Posted in Space.