SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Daniele Dallari, PLD Space
PLD Space announced it raised a total of €210 million ($227 million) in 2026, yet it has not completed an orbital launch. The Spanish startup is preparing its two‑stage Miura 5 vehicle, capable of delivering up to 1,040 kg to low‑Earth orbit, with a maiden flight slated for later this year from French Guiana. Funding includes a €180 million ($194 million) Series C led by Mitsubishi Electric and a €30 million ($32 million) venture‑debt loan from the European Investment Bank. At SmallSat Europe, Sales and Customer Manager Daniele Dallari joined a defense‑focused panel on Europe’s sovereign launch ambitions.
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Dr. Giuseppe Borghi, European Space Agency Φ-Lab
Dr. Giuseppe Borghi, who has led ESA’s Φ‑lab since 2020, is steering the agency’s open‑innovation hub toward AI‑driven Earth observation. The lab’s portfolio now spans geospatial foundation models, onboard AI, quantum computing and virtual‑reality tools that turn raw Sentinel‑2 imagery...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Dr. Marco Villa, Canopy Aerospace & Defense
Dr. Marco Villa, former SpaceX Dragon mission director and ex‑CEO of Tyvak (now Terran Orbital), is now CEO of Canopy Aerospace & Defense, a Dallas‑based advanced materials firm created in September 2025. Canopy, formed by Trive Capital from Hera Technologies,...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Simon Van Den Dries, EnduroSat
EnduroSat, a Bulgarian satellite manufacturer, opened a 17,500‑square‑meter factory in Sofia capable of producing two 200‑500 kg spacecraft per day. The company secured €43 million (≈$47 million) in May 2025 and a further $104 million in October 2025 from investors such as Riot Ventures,...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Stewart Marsh, Cambridge Consultants
Stewart Marsh, head of Satellite and Space at Cambridge Consultants, will speak on Day 1 of SmallSat Europe about the European small‑sat market outlook. Marsh’s team helped create Iridium’s Extreme Push‑to‑Talk service, which locks onto a satellite in under two seconds,...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Dr. Thomas Withington, Royal United Services Institute
Dr. Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute warned that Europe’s navigation, weather and military communications satellites are increasingly targeted by electronic‑warfare (EW) tools. A Secure World Foundation report shows 13 nations developing EW capabilities, while GNSS interference incidents...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Jenna Herrera, Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab’s Global Launch Services Manager Jenna Herrera is steering the company’s push into Europe, linking European agencies and commercial users with Rocket Lab’s launch sites in New Zealand and Virginia. The firm now offers the Electron small‑sat launcher and the...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Luis Gomes, AAC Clyde Space
AAC Clyde Space, a Glasgow‑based smallsat builder, secured the EPS‑Sterna contract with EUMETSAT in January 2026, lifting its order backlog to roughly SEK 1.1 billion (about $121 million). The company now projects 2026 revenue of SEK 475 million ($52 million), a 61 percent increase over 2025, and...
Hybrid Viewing Models Solidify as Streaming Integrates Into Premium Sports Distribution
The sports broadcasting landscape has moved into a disciplined hybrid model where OTT, pay‑TV, and free‑to‑air channels coexist. Market research from Futuresource shows major platforms such as Amazon and Netflix locking in multi‑billion‑dollar, multi‑year rights deals, while premium rights still...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Dr. Dietmar Pilz, European Space Agency
Dr. Dietmar Pilz, ESA’s Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, oversees a workforce of over 950 staff and 200 contractors responsible for engineering support across all ESA missions. Under his leadership, the agency successfully recovered the PROBA‑3 Coronagraph after a...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Rear Admiral Louis Tillier, EU Satellite Centre
Rear Admiral Louis Tillier, a former French naval intelligence officer, took over as director of the EU Satellite Centre (SatCen) in June 2024. SatCen, which has no owned satellites, has doubled its analytical output to more than 100 geospatial analyses...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Kateryna Chernohorenko, Ukraine Ministry of Defence
Ukraine’s Defence Ministry rolled out two battlefield‑grade mobile apps—Reserve+ and Army+—that now manage the records of more than six million reservists and active‑duty soldiers. The apps replaced dozens of paper logs, while the DELTA battlefield management system earned NATO certification...
SpaceX Is Worth $1.75 Trillion. Only 7% of That Is Real.
SpaceX filed a Form S‑1 on May 20 to raise up to $80 billion in a dual‑class IPO that would value the company at roughly $1.75 trillion, making it one of the world’s most valuable public firms. The prospectus breaks the business into three...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Celia Pelaz, Spire Global
Spire Global, a space‑to‑cloud analytics firm, has launched over 200 satellites across more than 40 missions and is now shifting focus from constellation building to recurring revenue generation. To steer this transition, the company hired Celia Pelaz, former COO of...
Software-Defined Modems and Hardware Bottlenecks Strain Proliferated Defense Space Architectures
An internal Space Force assessment dated Jan. 16, 2026 labels a key satellite program for hypersonic and ballistic missile warning as one of the service’s lowest‑performing initiatives. The report blames a rapid‑procurement approach that sacrifices thorough testing, leading to software‑defined integration bottlenecks,...
SPARC AI and Rate Manufacturing Partner to Deliver Software-Defined, GPS-Denied Drone Targeting
SPARC AI Inc. announced a strategic partnership with U.S. defense contractor Rate Manufacturing to embed its Overwatch navigation platform into Rate’s Model‑F multi‑mission drones. The software‑only solution mitigates inertial drift and enables precise targeting in GPS‑denied, jammed environments without adding...
Pentagon Enforces Commercial Satellite Blackout Over Middle East War Zone
The U.S. government and major commercial satellite firms have imposed a blackout on high‑resolution imagery over Iran and the wider Middle East conflict zone. The restriction, ordered by the White House, forces all new and archival images to undergo Pentagon...
Poland Just Made Sovereign SAR the European Default
Poland has taken operational control of POLSARIS, a four‑satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation, after ICEYE delivered the system in under twelve months. The €200 million (~$218 million) programme, managed by the newly created ARGUS agency, makes Warsaw one of the few...
Varda Space Industries W-6 Capsule Touches Down in South Australia
On May 20, 2026 Varda Space Industries’ W‑6 capsule safely landed at South Australia’s Koonibba Test Range after a high‑velocity re‑entry. The payload, supplied by NASA and U.S. defense agencies, captured real‑time data on thermal protection system performance at roughly...
ESA and Spain Establish Formal Framework for Sovereign Satellite Connectivity
On May 20, 2026 the European Space Agency and Spain’s Agencia Espacial Española signed a Memorandum of Intent to deepen cooperation on secure satellite connectivity, directly supporting the EU’s IRIS² program valued at several billion euros (≈$3.3 billion). The framework gives...
LEO Constellations and Ground Infrastructure Scaling Position Optical Satcom for Multi-Billion-Dollar Surge
Novaspace's third Optical Communications Market report projects global revenues for space‑based laser communication terminals to reach $12.9 billion by 2035, driven almost entirely by low‑Earth‑orbit (LEO) constellations. Closed, vertically integrated operators are expected to capture 74% of market value, leaving 26%...
Astroscale and SKY Perfect JSAT Alliance Signals Shift to In-Orbit Maintenance Economy
On May 19, 2026 Astroscale Holdings and Japan’s SKY Perfect JSAT announced a strategic capital and business alliance. SKY Perfect JSAT will invest ¥800 million (≈$5.2 million) in Astroscale’s ¥30.6 billion (≈$197 million) growth financing round, receiving 469,483 new shares at ¥1,704 each (≈$11). The partnership pairs Astroscale’s...
Intuitive Machines Secures Prime Contracts to Operate Key NASA and KARI Lunar Imaging Instruments
Intuitive Machines announced it will operate NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera and KARI’s ShadowCam under two three‑year contracts worth $15.5 million and $4.5 million. The deals shift the firm from a lunar lander builder to a central provider of cislunar imaging and...
IDirect Government Launches WCore to Virtualize Military Satellite Modems
iDirect Government unveiled WCore, a virtualized waveform core and hardware abstraction layer for MILSATCOM on May 18, 2026. The software transforms single‑purpose satellite modem hardware into software‑defined modems that can run up to 16 waveforms across GEO, MEO, LEO and HEO constellations....
The Stratospheric Toll of the Megaconstellation Era
The rapid expansion of low‑Earth‑orbit megaconstellations is creating a hidden climate threat. A University College London study finds rockets deposit black‑carbon soot directly into the stratosphere, where it lingers for about three years and traps heat 540 times more efficiently...
Cowboy Raises $275M and Files for 20,000 Orbital Data Centers, Forcing the ODC Thesis Into View
Cowboy Space Corporation, formerly Aetherflux, closed a $275 million Series B round led by Index Ventures, valuing the firm at $2 billion. The startup filed an FCC request to launch up to 20,000 low‑Earth‑orbit satellites—named “Stampede”—each housing a one‑megawatt data‑center payload with roughly...
Teleste and Polystar Partner to Launch AI Automation for Next Generation Cable Infrastructure
Teleste Networks and Polystar have formed a strategic partnership to deliver a cloud‑native AI platform that automates analytics for next‑generation cable infrastructure. The joint solution taps Teleste’s distributed access hardware and Polystar’s Kalix automation engine to convert the flood of...
The Transatlantic Space Defense Timeline Mismatch Is Now a NATO Problem
The United States is rapidly fielding a tactical low‑Earth‑orbit (LEO) data fabric, highlighted by a $3.5 billion award for the Space Development Agency’s Tracking Layer in December 2025 and a series of NRO launches, including NROL‑172 on May 11, 2026. Europe’s counterpart, funded through...
NASA and Eta Space Finalize Integration for LOXSAT Cryogenic Fuel Demonstration
NASA confirmed that the LOXSAT cryogenic fuel demonstration has entered final pre‑launch testing at Rocket Lab’s Long Beach facility. Developed by Eta Space under a NASA Tipping Point contract, the payload will launch on an Electron rocket from New Zealand no...
The End of GEO?
Satellite operator SES announced the cancellation of two Intelsat‑derived GEO satellites, IS‑41 and IS‑44, as part of a post‑acquisition fleet rationalisation that trims capex and avoids duplication. While SES still has five GEO craft on order, the move follows a...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Moritz Novak, GATE Space
GATE Space, a Vienna‑based spin‑off from TU Wien, is commercialising green chemical propulsion that lets smallsats maneuver, reposition and de‑orbit on command. Its flagship BeaconSat, Austria’s first military satellite, will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in February 2027, funded with roughly...
Exotrail Confirms Successful Deployment of NASA-Funded AEPEX CubeSat via Spacevan 002
In mid‑May 2026 Exotrail announced the successful deployment of the NASA‑funded AEPEX 6U CubeSat using its spacevan 002 orbital transfer vehicle. The OTV placed the satellite into a 500 km, >70° inclination orbit—an altitude and inclination that standard rideshare launches cannot reach...
Intuitive Machines to Acquire Goonhilly Earth Station and COMSAT to Scale Deep Space Network
Intuitive Machines announced a definitive agreement to acquire Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd and its U.S. subsidiary COMSAT, adding 44 antennas and deep‑space assets to its portfolio. The deal creates a vertically integrated space‑to‑ground network spanning the UK and the United...
SES Extends IRIS² Review as Consortium Reaches Initial Project Milestone
SES announced on its May 12 Q1 2026 earnings call that the internal review of the EU‑backed IRIS² satellite constellation will be extended, pushing the final go/no‑go decision to mid‑2026. The SpaceRISE consortium—SES, Eutelsat and Hispasat—has reached the “Rendez‑vous 1” milestone, but SES...
Gilat Wins Big Military Contracts, Expands India Footprint
Gilat Satellite Networks reported a strong Q1 2026, highlighted by a $23 million follow‑on contract with the U.S. Army and a new electronically steered antenna award for a European defense customer. The company also sealed a partnership with India’s Nelco Limited...
Satellite and the Upcoming Spectrum Auction
The FCC is set to auction at least 100 MHz of the Upper C‑band spectrum by mid‑2027, ending the long‑standing cost stability that satellite broadcasters relied on. This forces a rapid migration toward Internet Protocol (IP) and hybrid Ku‑band/IP distribution models...
ExoMars 2028 Structural Models Arrive in Cannes for Environmental Testing
On May 12, 2026 Thales Alenia Space completed integration of ExoMars 2028 structural models in Turin and shipped them to Cannes for vibration and acoustic testing. The models replicate the carrier and entry‑descent‑landing modules that will deliver the Rosalind Franklin...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Gregg Burgess, Orion Space Solutions
Gregg Burgess, President of Orion Space Solutions, highlighted the company’s focus on very low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellites at SmallSat Europe. Orion’s flagship DARPA Ouija nanosatellite aims for long‑duration VLEO operations while measuring ionospheric conditions. In March 2026 the firm...
Northrop Grumman Unveils LR-450 Positioning System for Diverse Space Missions
Northrop Grumman announced the LR‑450, a compact inertial positioning system that leverages its milli‑Hemispherical Resonating Gyroscope (mHRG) technology. The unit provides three‑axis orientation without external satellite signals, targeting small‑satellite, lunar and deep‑space missions. It builds on over 70 million hours of...
BlackSky Shifts From “Imagery to Answers” As Gen-3 Constellation Hits Commercial Inflection
BlackSky’s third‑generation satellite constellation is now delivering 35‑centimeter resolution imagery in near‑real time, a capability once limited to classified systems. The company announced $160 million in new contracts and a $380 million backlog, highlighted by a $99 million Air Force IDIQ for large‑aperture...
Your Anomaly Detection Isn’t the Problem
The article contends that the dominant cost in satellite operations is not rare anomalies but the routine monitoring that occupies roughly 80% of engineers' time. A 2025 industry survey and case studies—such as Planet’s SkySat automation and the European Data...
AICRAFT Expands Beyond Edge Computing with Advanced SAR Radar Electronics
Australian AI firm AICRAFT has secured Manufacturing Growth Accelerator funding to develop a low‑power front‑end electronics suite for synthetic‑aperture radar (SAR) payloads. Working with Flinders University and Indian antenna maker Guerin Technologies, the project integrates a custom analogue‑to‑digital converter with...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Frank M. Salzgeber, Nadir Space Venture
Frank M. Salzgeber, co‑founder of Nadir Space Venture, highlighted at SmallSat Europe how Europe’s mature small‑sat manufacturing base can meet the Gulf’s rapidly expanding demand. He noted Saudi Arabia’s space economy, now $8.7 billion, is projected to reach $31.6 billion by 2035,...
ATVA Urges FCC to Close “Affiliation-Swap” Loopholes Impacting Satellite Operators
On May 11, 2026 the American Television Alliance filed a petition with the FCC demanding an end to “affiliation‑swap” loopholes that let broadcasters sidestep ownership limits. The filing details a scheme where a broadcaster first acquires a network’s programming rights,...
Muon Space Scales Workforce Following Transition to Constellation-Scale Manufacturing
Muon Space, fresh from a $146 million Series B round and high‑value defense contracts, is scaling its workforce to shift from custom satellite builds to a mass‑production "Mission Foundry" model. The company opened a 130,000‑square‑foot San Jose facility capable of delivering up...
SmallSat Europe Speaker Focus: Johannes Galatsanos, Diffraqtion
Diffraqtion, a quantum‑imaging startup spun out of MIT and the University of Maryland, announced a $4.2 million pre‑seed round that includes a DARPA Small Business Innovation Research Phase‑II contract. The company’s quantum camera promises up to 20‑times higher resolution and 1,000‑times...
UAE Space Agency Drives Public-Private Collaboration at MIITE 2026
At the fifth Make it in the Emirates (MIITE) 2026 forum, the UAE Space Agency showcased its push to embed private firms into the national space agenda outlined in the Space Strategy 2031. The agency highlighted the expansion of Space Economic...
Sama Jordan TV Joins Es’hailSat Video Neighborhood at 26° East
Qatar’s Es’hailSat has added Jordanian news channel Sama Jordan TV to its 26° East video neighborhood, broadcasting via the Es’hail‑2 satellite across the Middle East and North Africa. The direct‑to‑home service is uplinked from the Tier 4‑certified Al Ghuwayriyah Teleport in Doha. This...
Anduril Secures $100M Modification to Modernize Space Surveillance Network
Anduril Industries has secured a $100.3 million contract modification from the U.S. Space Force to expand and modernize the Space Surveillance Network (SSN). The award funds the rollout of SDANet, a mesh‑based communications architecture built on Anduril’s Lattice software, replacing fragmented...
AST SpaceMobile Pivots to SpaceX for Mid-June Launch of Three BlueBird Satellites
AST SpaceMobile announced that its next three BlueBird Block 2 satellites will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in mid‑June 2026, after the April New Glenn failure left BlueBird 7 unrecoverable. The shift to SpaceX restores deployment momentum for the company’s low‑Earth‑orbit cellular broadband constellation....