OuterspaceToday — Space Business, Technology & Defense Intelligence

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• Space Force Taps Sphinx Defense for $287 Million Nuclear Command Software

  July 29, 2026

  The U.S. Space Force awarded a $287 million contract to Sphinx Defense on Monday, July 27, 2026, to deliver mission planning software for the GRIFFON program, the ground control architecture supporting strategic nuclear communications. The award advances the software ground segment for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications system, which provides secure, survivable communications for national command authorities and strategic nuclear forces. The Ground Resilient Integration and Framewor

• Psyche Nails Mars Gravity Assist, Puts Instruments to the Test Ahead of 2029 Asteroid Arrival

  July 28, 2026

  NASA's Psyche spacecraft completed a successful flyby of Mars, using the planet's gravity to speed itself toward a metal-rich asteroid in the main belt. The May 15 maneuver placed the spacecraft on the trajectory needed to rendezvous with its target in the summer of 2029, while also giving mission scientists a rare chance to exercise its instruments around a well-studied planet. The encounter served two purposes. The gravitational boost adjusted Psyche's path and increased its speed, and the we

• Roman Space Telescope Set for August 30 Falcon Heavy Launch, Eight Months Ahead of Schedule

  July 28, 2026

  NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to lift off at 7:20 a.m. on August 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center. The 42-foot-long observatory is designed to image more than 50 times as much sky in its first five years as the Hubble Space Telescope covered in 30 years, a scale scientists say will surface discoveries no telescope has captured before. The mission aims to study dark energy, dark matter, and new cosmic phenomena by imaging millions of ga

• Rocket Lab Wins $266 Million Space Force Deal for 12 Suborbital Launches, Anchored by New Alaska Site

  July 28, 2026

  Rocket Lab has won a $266 million U.S. Space Force contract to conduct 12 suborbital launches over the next three years, with options for six additional missions. The USSF award is the largest launch contract in Rocket Lab's history and will establish a new company launch location at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska in Kodiak. The contract was awarded through Space Systems Command's Rocket Systems Launch Program, or RSLP, which procures launch services for experimental, research and nationa

• Classified NRO Payload and Chinese Triple-Header Fill a Busy Launch Week

  July 28, 2026

  A classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite is set to launch from Cape Canaveral this week alongside three Chinese orbital missions, all scheduled within days of each other. The overlapping manifest illustrates the pace at which both the U.S. intelligence community and China are moving hardware to orbit. The week opens with a concentrated block of Chinese activity on July 29, followed by the NRO mission on July 30. Two of the three Chinese launches carry undisclosed payloads, and the

• NASA to Chase August 12 Eclipse Shadow With High-Altitude Jet and 86 Balloons

  July 28, 2026

  NASA-funded science teams will pursue the Moon's shadow across Greenland, Iceland, and Spain during the total solar eclipse on Wednesday, August 12, using a high-altitude research jet and dozens of scientific balloons. The campaign aims to study the Sun's corona and how the temporary darkening of daytime skies affects Earth's atmosphere. The eclipse offers researchers a rare vantage point. "From our unique perspective on Earth during a total solar eclipse, scientists can study the Sun's corona

• Pentagon Deal Sets L3Harris to Quadruple THAAD Propulsion Output

  July 28, 2026

  L3Harris Technologies announced today that it has signed a seven-year framework agreement with the U.S. Department of War and Lockheed Martin to quadruple production of propulsion systems for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense. The THAAD missile defense production agreement represents a major expansion of one of the most important upstream components in the U.S. missile defense supply chain and is expected to become the largest THAAD propulsion award L3Harris has received to date. THAAD i

• MDA Space Prices $600-Million Note Offering to Fund Blue Canyon Acquisition

  July 27, 2026

  MDA Space has priced a $600-million private placement of senior unsecured notes to finance its purchase of U.S. satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies. The offering caps a month of intensive capital raises tied to two separate acquisitions and completes a dual-track financing strategy designed to fund both without overburdening the company. The debt offering is the second half of a plan built to pay for two distinct deals announced in mid-June and early July. In June, MDA agreed to buy

• Amazon Files for 5,105-Satellite Direct-to-Phone Constellation, Targeting 2028 Launch

  July 27, 2026

  Amazon submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission on Saturday to launch a new low Earth orbit constellation of 5,105 satellites designed to provide direct-to-device service including voice, messaging, data, and emergency services. If approved, Amazon says it will begin deploying the constellation in 2028, marking a significant expansion of its satellite ambitions. The filing builds on Amazon's move earlier this year to acquire Globalstar's satellite network, along with Gl

• Soyuz MS-28 Returns NASA Astronaut Chris Williams After 241-Day Space Station Mission

  July 27, 2026

  NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev landed safely in Kazakhstan on Sunday, July 26, concluding an eight-month science mission aboard the International Space Station. The parachute-assisted landing brought home a crew that spent 241 days in orbit, part of NASA's continuing effort to advance research and prepare for future human missions to the Moon and Mars. The three crew members launched to the space station on November 27, 2025. The mi

• Rocket Lab Wins $266 Million Space Force Deal, Adds Alaska Launch Site

  July 27, 2026

  Rocket Lab will build a new launch site in Kodiak, Alaska, under a $266 million U.S. Space Force contract for up to 18 suborbital missions, the company's largest launch award to date. The deal expands Rocket Lab's role in military launch services as the Pentagon seeks more capacity for weapons testing. The contract was awarded by Space Systems Command's Rocket Systems Launch Program, which provides responsive launch services for research, development and operational test missions across the Def

• SpaceX Sets Sights on First Starship Upper Stage Tower Catch for Flight 14

  July 27, 2026

  SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk announced on July 25, 2026, that the company will attempt to catch the Starship upper stage with its launch tower arms on the upcoming Flight 14 mission. The move, revealed within hours of Flight 13's ocean splashdown, would mark the first time the upper stage is recovered at the tower rather than at sea, and a major step toward full reusability for the heavy-lift system. The announcement followed the Flight 13 test on Friday, July 24, 2026, which ended

• Juno Measures Europa's Ice Shell at 29 Kilometers, Deepening the Case for a Thick Crust

  July 26, 2026

  NASA's Juno spacecraft has produced the first measurement able to distinguish between competing models of Europa's ice shell, placing the average thickness of the moon's cold, conductive ice at 29 kilometers in the region observed. The result, drawn from a single flyby, pushes a long-running scientific debate toward the thick-ice interpretation and sharpens questions about whether chemistry can move between the moon's hidden ocean, the rock below and the irradiated surface above. Juno was built

• Sun Holds 55 Percent More Silver Than Earlier Estimates, Uppsala Study Finds

  July 26, 2026

  Researchers at Uppsala University have determined that the Sun contains 55 percent more silver than previous calculations indicated. The revised estimate, produced with a more realistic model of the solar atmosphere, resolves a long-standing mismatch between the silver measured in the Sun and the amount found in ancient meteorites. The Sun is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, with heavier elements such as carbon, iron, and silver accounting for only 1.5 percent of its mass. Despite t

• NASA Runs Google's Gemma AI in Orbit, Letting a Satellite Analyze Its Own Images

  July 25, 2026

  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has successfully run Google's Gemma 3 artificial intelligence model aboard a satellite in low Earth orbit, demonstrating a new approach in which spacecraft can analyze what they see before sending data back to Earth. The experiment, called NAVI-Orbital, was conducted aboard Loft Orbital's YAM-9 satellite and achieved its first successful in-orbit demonstration on April 16, 2026. According to the researchers, it represents the first reported demonstration of a vi