Space economy, defense, and the money behind them. Writing Space Worthy, a weekly brief. Ex @boeing @google @openstreetmap. Proudly 🇪🇺
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European launchers: the full series in one place.
Opener: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
1 Isar Aerospace: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
2 PLD Space: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
3 MaiaSpace: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
4 Rocket Factory Augsburg: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
5 Ariane 6: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
6 Avio and Vega C: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
7 HyImpulse: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
8 Orbex and Omnidea: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
9 Latitude and Sirius: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
10 Skyrora: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
11 Wrap-up: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
Only Isar has reached orbit so far. PLD Space and MaiaSpace are next, both aiming for 2027.
European launchers, part 4: Rocket Factory Augsburg.
Rocket Factory Augsburg, or RFA, was founded in 2018 in Augsburg, Germany. Its majority owner is OHB, the satellite maker from Bremen. RFA One is a three-stage rocket, about 30 metres tall, with nine Helix engines on the first stage. The current version is built for up to 500 kg to sun-synchronous orbit. It will launch from SaxaVord in Shetland, which would be the first vertical orbital launch from the United Kingdom.
RFA One has not flown. In August 2024 a first stage was destroyed in a ground test at SaxaVord. A new rocket stood on the pad in July 2026, but after a week of tests RFA found an issue and took it down. The August launch window was cancelled. There is still no new date.
The money keeps coming. In August the European Space Agency signed a €186.9 million contract that requires an orbital launch before 2028. In September it added €2.7 million for test stands at SaxaVord. On 5 October Alexander Dahm, from Hensoldt and Airbus, became CEO.
RFA has the funding and a spaceport, but its first flight has no date after two setbacks on the pad. Isar is already in orbit and PLD targets the first half of 2027, so RFA is behind both.
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Wow!
Introducing Mini 2, the next-generation portable Starlink. Get up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge with the quick-swap battery, or plug in with USB-C.
With built-in Wi-Fi, all you need is a clear view of the sky to get online in 60 seconds.
Preorders are now open by invitation in the US. Be the first to know when it's available → starlink.com/mini-2
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The week in one line: SpaceX's $40B Nvidia chip lease says rent is owed even if a chip fails, and SpaceX credit default swaps hit 282bp, near a record. Lenders are underwriting SpaceX itself.
Space Worthy #20: simonecortesi.substack.com/p…
Also on X: teapaw.org/simonecortesi/status/2…
Space Worthy #20: SpaceX's chip lease, AST's Blacklift, and the price of a ground network.
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Russia's answer to Starlink has 30 satellites in orbit. Starlink has about 9,900.
Bureau 1440 launched two batches of 16 Rassvet satellites this year, in March and July. Two burned up. The plan was 156 by the end of 2026, which needs seven more Soyuz launches, and none is on the schedule.
Small does not mean idle. Ukrainian military intelligence told Reuters on Friday that Russia already uses Rassvet for military communications over Ukraine, to make strike drones more accurate and harder to jam.
Russia also filed with the ITU for Rassvet-4, 374 satellites at 800 km in 17 planes. Partial service is targeted for 2027.
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Blue Origin's Northstar: 715,000 pounds of thrust vs 640,000 for BE-4, half the parts, 30% less mass, target cost a quarter of a BE-4. January's New Glenn still flies BE-4s.
This week in Space Worthy #20: simonecortesi.substack.com/p…
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SES says clearing 160 megahertz of upper C-band will cost about $3.6 billion: seven new geostationary satellites, five working and two spares, up by 2029. Clearing can pay SES up to $5.6 billion. FCC comments close Nov 30.
More in Space Worthy #20: simonecortesi.substack.com/p…
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Space Worthy #20: SpaceX's chip lease, AST's Blacklift, and the price of a ground network.
The UK announced today that its military satellite Titania is in orbit, launched last month on a SpaceX rocket. The Ministry of Defence pitches it as new eyes in space for the Armed Forces.
The 2021 contract tells a narrower story. Dstl paid about $12.7 million for a 100 kg laser communications demonstrator, built at first by In-Space Missions, meant to beam intelligence data down to a ground station called Puck at up to 10 gigabits per second. Launch was planned for 2023.
So it flew three years late, and the press release now leads with observation. It is the second UK military satellite after Tyche, with Juno and Oberon next.
What Titania really tests is whether Britain can move imagery from orbit to the ground fast and hard to intercept. That laser link matters more for the roughly $4 billion space plan than one small satellite's camera.
CesiumAstro closed a 730 million US dollar Series D yesterday that values the Austin antenna and satellite company above 4.5 billion US dollars. Janus Henderson led the equity. Export-Import Bank of the United States and JPMorgan added 100 million US dollars of debt. Capital announced in 2026 now tops 1.2 billion US dollars.
Alongside the raise, CesiumAstro unveiled Synchronicity, a planned 737-satellite communications constellation with onboard compute for commercial and government customers. Element-1, its first operational satellite, reached orbit in October. Seven more Element launches are booked for 2028 and 2029. The company wants about 350 Synchronicity satellites in orbit by 2032.
CesiumAstro spent a decade selling phased-array antennas. With this round it is buying the right to run its own network, and the 2032 fleet target is the test of whether the antenna business scales into a constellation business.
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AST SpaceMobile said today it will build Blacklift, a reusable 20-ton rocket meant to loft up to five BlueBird satellites per flight starting late 2028.
The engines come from Firefly Aerospace under a package worth more than 1.3 billion US dollars: 27 Miranda and 9 Vira engines for the first three rockets, engineering support for three years, and a perpetual license so AST can make the engines in a new US plant. Upfront consideration is about 800 million US dollars, half in cash and half in AST shares.
AST says it will keep using outside launchers, with contracts now covering more than 100 BlueBirds for 2027 and 2028. BlueBirds through unit 51 are already in production in Midland, Texas.
The company is paying Firefly to own its launch cadence. The late-2028 date is a plan on paper until a first Blacklift flies.
Ukraine's Chargé d'Affaires Denys Sienik said Kyiv is opening talks with the Pentagon on a new Starshield deal before the current contract ends in mid-2027. He said Ukraine still has no explanation from the Pentagon or SpaceX for the October service disruption.
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Russia's Cosmos 2612 closed to a few hundred meters of ICEYE X36 in mid-October. LeoLabs called it the first known unsanctioned rendezvous in low Earth orbit. Vantor's Oct 17 photo shows them about 1 km apart. Two sibling Russian craft are now lining up on ICEYE X37.
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SoftBank signed a five-year deal with Sceye to build, launch and operate a fleet of stratospheric airships over Japan, with nationwide coverage as the goal.
The test flight left New Mexico on August 9, traveled to Japan and back over 30 days, and spent a week over Japan serving texts, voice calls, internet and video straight to standard phones. Fleet size and price were not disclosed. SoftBank already invested in Sceye's Series C in 2025.
Phones in Japan may soon get coverage from three layers: towers, airships and satellites. For a country that plans around earthquakes and typhoons, the airship layer is the one that can hold position over a disaster zone.
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Japan picked Interstellar Technologies for its STAND program, a JAXA grant of up to ¥12 billion (about $76 million) to fly the ZERO rocket from its second flight through March 2031.
ZERO has not flown yet. The first launch is targeted for 2027 from Hokkaido, paid for by a separate ¥19.4 billion ($122 million) government grant. Add the ¥20.1 billion ($127 million) Series F led by Woven by Toyota and the company has about $325 million lined up before reaching orbit once.
Customers want a flight record before they sign. Tokyo has now covered the early flights too, which takes away the biggest risk a new launcher faces after its first launch.
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AT&T and AST SpaceMobile say they moved a live phone connection from AT&T's ground network to AST's BlueBird satellites without dropping it. The test ran on October 21 near Granite Falls, Washington, with ordinary smartphones. Ericsson and Nokia supplied the network software on each side.
AT&T says that with other providers, moving between ground and satellite coverage can mean a dropped call. A handoff inside one call lets the satellite work like one more cell tower, which is what a carrier needs before it can sell the service.
The companies published no handoff time and gave no date for beta tests or commercial service. So far it is one successful field test, and AST's commercial timeline hasn't moved.
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Voyager Technologies reported its third quarter last night. Revenue was $88.7 million, up 124% from a year ago and above the $81.4 million analysts expected. The company also raised the low end of its 2026 guidance to $285 million.
Backlog hit a record $742 million. Of that, $347 million came with Astrobotic, the lunar lander company Voyager bought. Without it, backlog is about $395 million, up 18% from June.
Costs went the other way. Gross margin fell to 11.5% from 15.4%, and the quarterly net loss grew to $55.7 million from $16.3 million a year earlier.
The organic growth is real, but almost half of the headline backlog was acquired. Voyager still loses more than 60 cents for every dollar it sells.
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On October 30 Canada and the EU agreed to start exploratory talks on Canadian access to IRIS², Europe's secure satellite network. The same day MDA Space announced a first contract worth more than $72 million to build digital antennas in Montreal for the first 66 IRIS² satellites, due to launch in 2029.
Carney told Politico that Canada has kept its defenses off a satellite system a billionaire could switch off, and that Canada's own constellation, Telesat Lightspeed, should be working in 2028.
Canadian industry is already earning money from Europe's network. A working alternative to Starlink for Canada is still at least a year and a half away.
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ESA has opened a call for companies to fly reusable rocket boosters: recover a first stage after launch, then fly it again. It is called BEST!2 Flight Demonstrations, published October 27 as an advance notice, with no budget or timeline yet.
This is Themis, Europe's reusable demonstrator, on its stand in September 2025. It still hasn't made its first hop. ESA's director of space transportation, Géraldine Naja, said winter at Esrange could push that hop into 2027.
SpaceX first landed a Falcon 9 booster in December 2015. Asking industry to fly real hardware is the right move. Until ESA attaches money and dates to it, Europe remains years away from flying the same rocket twice.
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Northwood Space raised $375 million yesterday at a $2 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth. Its previous round was $100 million in January. In under three years the company has gone from a $6.3 million seed round to more than $500 million raised.
Northwood builds ground stations, the antennas that talk to satellites, and wants to rent them out as shared capacity the way cloud providers rent servers.
In February it said it would have 18 ground sites running by the end of 2026. Now it says it has six, on two continents.
The money is moving much faster than the network. At $2 billion investors are paying for the Torrance factory and the Space Force contract, and in 2027 the site count has to catch up.
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26 years ago today the first crew moved into the International Space Station: Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev. Since 2 November 2000 there has always been at least one person aboard.
The station is due to retire at the end of 2030. The first commercial replacement, Vast's Haven-1, was meant to launch in May 2026. It now targets the first quarter of 2027, and it hosts four people for two weeks at a time.
Vast's station with a permanent crew, Haven-2, is planned for the end of 2030. That is the same date the ISS retires, with no room for another slip.
My read: a gap in Western human presence in orbit after 2030 is now likely, while China keeps Tiangong crewed.
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