Space Industry Weekly: When Rockets Go Boom, China’s Satelite Dance, and Golden Dome Defense Budget Concerns

Team, if you thought last week was inter­est­ing in the space indus­try, this week has added to the indus­try’s per­plex­i­ty. Between explod­ing Star­ships, mys­te­ri­ous Chi­nese satel­lite ren­dezvous, and Con­gress play­ing hot pota­to with the defense bud­get, there’s plen­ty to unpack. So let’s go high-lev­el dive into what’s been hap­pen­ing above our heads and in the halls of power.

SpaceX’s Star­ship Has a Bad Night

Let’s start with the big boom heard at Star­base. SpaceX’s Ship 36 decid­ed to put on an unsched­uled fire­works dis­play just after mid­night East­ern on June 19th. The upper stage was sit­ting on a test stand, ready for what should have been a rou­tine sta­t­ic-fire test, when the explo­sion occurred.

SpaceX con­firmed all per­son­nel were safe and account­ed for. But this throws a wrench in their plans for the tenth Star­ship test flight, which was tar­get­ing late June. The SpaceX’s Ship 36 explo­sion marks anoth­er set­back in the Star­ship devel­op­ment pro­gram, fol­low­ing upper-stage fail­ures on three pre­vi­ous flights. With Elon Musk return­ing from his DOGE respon­si­bil­i­ties, there are going to be a lot of sleep­less nights for sev­er­al SpaceX employ­ees until this mat­ter is resolved.

Chi­na’s Space Dance: Are They Refu­el­ing or Just Get­ting Cozy?

Chi­na has two satel­lites in geo­syn­chro­nous orbit: Shi­jian-21 and Shi­jian-25. Mul­ti­ple track­ing com­pa­nies, includ­ing Sling­shot Aero­space and COMSPOC, observed these two birds approach­ing each oth­er on June 13th, com­ing with­in approx­i­mate­ly a kilo­me­ter (0.6 miles) of each other.

Why should we care? If Chi­na suc­cess­ful­ly pulls off an on-orbit refu­el­ing oper­a­tion, that would be a game-chang­er. Think about it — the abil­i­ty to gas up satel­lites in space means they don’t have to be dis­pos­able any­more. Expen­sive birds in GEO could keep oper­at­ing way beyond their orig­i­nal fuel limits.

The U.S. Space Force has been mon­i­tor­ing this entire process, with our GSSAP satel­lites, USA 270 and USA 271, keep­ing tabs from the east and west. Mean­while, we’re spend­ing a measly $14.5 mil­lion on sim­i­lar capa­bil­i­ties — near­ly a 50% cut from last year’s already tiny bud­get. As one expert put it, “Chi­na seems to get that, while we risk being late to the party.”

Gold­en Dome: The Mis­sile Defense Sys­tem Nobody Can Define

Speak­ing of bud­gets and par­ti­san pol­i­tics, let’s dis­cuss the Gold­en Dome — the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s ambi­tious mis­sile defense project that has Con­gress split right down par­ty lines. Gen. Michael Guetlein has just been for­mal­ly nom­i­nat­ed to lead this ini­tia­tive, which he has com­pared to the Man­hat­tan Project in terms of scale and ambition.

Repub­li­cans are all-in, with Reps. Jeff Crank and Dale Strong even launched a House Gold­en Dome Cau­cus. They want hun­dreds of satel­lites to detect and inter­cept mis­sile threats from orbit. Sounds great, right?

Well, Democ­rats aren’t buy­ing it. Rep. Seth Moul­ton called it a poten­tial arms race starter, and Rep. George White­sides hit the nail on the head: “We don’t real­ly know what it is yet, to be per­fect­ly hon­est.” Even the House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee is warn­ing that DoD has­n’t pro­vid­ed basic infor­ma­tion about what Gold­en Dome entails or how it plans to imple­ment it.

The House passed $25 bil­lion for Gold­en Dome in their rec­on­cil­i­a­tion bill, but the Sen­ate has­n’t act­ed yet. With­out that fund­ing, this whole thing could be more Pow­er­Point than execution.

Bud­get Chaos: Defense Con­trac­tors Play­ing Guess­ing Games

If you’re a defense con­trac­tor right now, you’re prob­a­bly spend­ing a lot of time read­ing bud­gets, fol­low­ing AFCEA or the Space Force Asso­ci­a­tion, or try­ing to deci­pher tea leaves to under­stand this new direc­tion. The Pen­tagon’s fis­cal 2026 bud­get sit­u­a­tion is what the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Space Asso­ci­a­tion polite­ly refers to as “a com­plex and evolv­ing bud­get landscape.”

The admin­is­tra­tion wants a $150 bil­lion one-time Pen­ta­gon increase through their “One Big Beau­ti­ful” Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Bill, but nobody knows if it’ll pass. Sec­re­tary Hegseth is ask­ing ser­vices to find $50 bil­lion in cuts from “low­er-pri­or­i­ty pro­grams.” Invest­ment ana­lysts at TD Cowen summed it up per­fect­ly: “This has been the most con­fused bud­get release we’ve ever seen.”

The Good News Corner

It was­n’t all explo­sions and con­fu­sion this week. Some pos­i­tive developments:

• Space Force Fund­ing: Despite the chaos, there is bipar­ti­san sup­port for boost­ing the Space Force’s bud­get to near­ly $29 billion—a $2.7 bil­lion increase. Even Democ­rats like Rep. White­sides agree that “cut­ting the Space Force is a bad idea.”
• Com­mer­cial Progress: Var­da Space is launch­ing its W‑4 mis­sion on SpaceX’s Trans­porter this week­end, using its first in-house space­craft bus. They’re aim­ing for month­ly launches.
• Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion: Ukraine is receiv­ing Star­link direct-to-cell ser­vice to help areas affect­ed by Russ­ian strikes, and NASA has signed a new Artemis coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with Ger­many despite bud­get uncertainty.

Look­ing Ahead

As we head into anoth­er week, keep an eye on the poten­tial sec­ond Chi­nese satel­lite dock­ing attempt sched­uled for today (June 23rd, 2025). Will they pull off what could be the first-ever on-orbit refu­el­ing? Will Con­gress fig­ure out what the Gold­en Dome is before throw­ing bil­lions at it? Will SpaceX fig­ure out how to keep their Star­ships from spon­ta­neous­ly disassembling?

One thing’s for sure — in the space indus­try, there’s nev­er a dull moment. Whether it’s tech­ni­cal chal­lenges, geopo­lit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing, or good old-fash­ioned bud­get bat­tles, we’re liv­ing in inter­est­ing times.

June 23, 2025

Posted in Space.