🛰️ MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS

🇺🇸 Little Place Labs to deploy software aboard Loft Orbital satellites
Houston startup Little Place Labs announced a contract to deploy software to Loft Orbital’s YAM-6 satellite.
“We’ll pair Loft’s low-latency operations, using its space infrastructure, with our cutting-edge analytics to enhance maritime domain awareness,” Little Place Labs said in an Aug. 7 blog post.
Funding for the mission comes from Little Place Lab’s $1.8 million Small Business Technology Transfer Phase 2 award from AFWERX.
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🇺🇸 Safran to establish production line for electric propulsion systems
Safran Electronics & Defense will establish a new production line for satellite electric propulsion systems in the United States to serve commercial and U.S. government customers.
Safran announced Aug. 5 it intends to open a facility in Colorado that it will use to produce its EPS X00 electric thrusters, intended for smaller spacecraft in low Earth orbit. The company expects the first systems to come off that production line in the first quarter of 2026.
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🇮🇹 Leaf Space deploys first Ka-band ground station
Italian ground segment service provider Leaf Space has deployed its first ground station with a Ka-band link to meet demand for higher data rate applications.
Leaf Space said the triband Ka, X and S-band antenna at its Blönduós, Iceland facility entered service in June following successful tests with a remote sensing customer, which is using the Ka-band link to download larger amounts of data from orbit.
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🇮🇹 🇬🇧 D-Orbit to help demonstrate Magdrive’s electric propulsion system
Magdrive, a space startup focusing on innovative electrical propulsion systems, and D-Orbit, provider in the space logistics industry, announced a collaboration for Magdrive’s first in-orbit demonstration mission of the Magdrive Rogue propulsion thruster, slated for a June 2025 launch.
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💰️ FINANCE, FUNDING AND M&A

🇨🇦 NordSpace invests $5M to develop its spaceport
Ontario-based NordSpace Corp. announced that it will be investing $5M towards the development of the first phase of Spaceport Canada, a mission critical component of the company’s end-to-end space launch service.
Spaceport Canada, owned and operated by NordSpace Corp., will be a commercial spaceport designed for the company’s orbital launch vehicle, Tundra, as well as partner launch vehicles under the upcoming Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA) between the United States and Canada.
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🇩🇪 Dcubed raises series A round
German startup Dcubed raised 4.4 million euros ($4.8 million) in a Series A funding round.
With the investment, announced Aug. 5, Dcubed will expand production, demonstrate in-space manufacturing and open a U.S. office
Expansion Aerospace Ventures and BayBG Venture Capital led Dcubed’s Series A investment round. Also participating were HTGF, Aurelia Foundry, Ventis, Rymdkapital and Decisive Point Europe.
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🛰️ CORE SERVICES

🇺🇸 🇭🇺 Genesis SFL signs up with The Exploration Company
Hungarian space company Genesis SFL announced on 30 July that it has secured a spot aboard The Exploration Company’s Mission Possible demonstrator. The space transportation services company has shared with European Spaceflight that the flight is now sold out.
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🇨🇦 🇺🇸 GHGSat contracts UTIAS SFL to build greenhouse gas monitoring satellites
GHGSat has contracted Space Flight Laboratory to build two additional greenhouse gas monitoring satellites for the company’s constellation. 
The satellites, announced Monday, will be based on the SFL 15-kg NEMO satellite bus, the same platform used to build the first nine GHGSat spacecraft. SFL built GHGSat’s demonstration satellite which launched in 2016 and built eight additional satellites.
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🇺🇸 General Atomics awarded USSF contract For Phase 1 of the Enterprise Space Terminal program
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has revealed that the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF), Space Systems Command (SSC) has awarded the company Phase 1 of the Enterprise Space Terminal (EST) program.
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🛰️ PRODUCT, PARTNERSHIPS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

🇩🇪 🇺🇸 Exolaunch and Impulse Space announce strategic partnership
Exolaunch and Impulse Space today announced the signing of a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA).
The SPA defines several key areas of cooperation between Exolaunch and Impulse Space.
Exolaunch will supply advanced separation systems for cubesats and microsats, such as the industry-leading EXOpod Nova and CarboNIX, as well as integration and mission management services. Impulse Space will contribute its suite of OTVs, including Mira for delivering satellites in LEO, MEO, GEO, Cislunar or beyond; Helios, their high-performance kick stage, will also service satellites targeting Geostationary Orbit
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🇺🇸Benchmark partners with Starlight Engines to Augment Mission Coverage  
Benchmark Space Systems today announced strategic partnerships with Starlight Engines, a novel Hall Effect Thruster provider, to further meet the imminent need for interoperable, multi-technology hybrid propulsion systems in a new era of dynamic space operations.  
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🇺🇸 Impulse Space announces rideshare services to GEO
Orbital transfer vehicle developer Impulse Space will offer rideshare services for spacecraft going to geostationary orbit using its Helios tug, along with an upgraded version of its Mira vehicle.
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🇺🇸 Viasat announces constellation management software
Viasat plans to demonstrate automated constellation management software in 2026 to help small satellites operate independently in increasingly congested low Earth orbit (LEO). 
The Multi-Mission Orchestrator’s (MMO) algorithms would draw from publicly available orbital data and information from participating satellite operators to reduce the need for ground-based control crews, the geostationary fleet operator announced Aug. 5.
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🇺🇸 Lynker Space, a startup that monitors space weather
Lynker Space has introduced a new capability for predicting and mitigating space weather threats to numerous industries and critical services.
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🚀 LAUNCH CONTRACTS AND MISSIONS

🇺🇸 Firefly Aerospace signs launch contract with L3 Harris
Firefly Aerospace has won a contract from L3Harris for as many as 20 launches of its Alpha rocket over five years.
Firefly announced Aug. 7 it signed a contract with L3Harris for between two and four launches annually from 2027 through 2031. The contract is in addition to an earlier deal between the companies for three Alpha launches in 2026.
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🌎️ CUSTOMERS OF THE SPACE INDUSTRY

🇺🇸🇩🇪Airbus Defence and Space to partner with Lufthansa for Starlab crew training
Airbus Defence and Space and Lufthansa Aviation Training have agreed to cooperate in the development of an effective training process for the crews of the future Starlab commercial space station.
US-based Voyager Space and Airbus signed an agreement in August 2023 to jointly pursue the development of the Starlab space station. The pair is currently targeting 2028 for the launch of the low Earth orbit destination, with commercial activities commencing in 2029.
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📜 REGULATORY & GOVERNMENT

🇩🇪German Space Agency signs agreement with commercial spaceplane company, Polaris 
The German space agency DLR has signed an agreement with POLARIS Spaceplanes to explore how to integrate regular spaceplane and hypersonic vehicle flights into commercial airspace.
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🇺🇸Orbit Fab certified for Government missions by Space Systems Command 
Orbit Fab today announced its RAFTI™ (Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface) refueling port was designated by the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) as a refueling interface for in-space fueling of military satellites.
The SSC’s System Engineering Review Board (SERB) made the recommendation following mission-critical assessments that RAFTI meets the technical qualifications to support a wide range of U.S. Government space missions.
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🔭 SCIENTIFIC STUDIES & DISCOVERIES 

🇨🇳 Water discovered in Chang’e-5 lunar samples
Researchers closely inspected samples collected by China’s Chang’e-5 probe, which landed on the lunar surface in 2020, and found a “prismatic, plate-like transparent crystal” – roughly the width of a human hair – that was in fact an “unknown lunar mineral” dubbed ULM-1, according to the study, which published July 16 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The ULM-1 crystal (with the chemical formula (NH4)MgCl3·6H2O) are made up of roughly 41% water, with bits of ammonia that keep that H2O molecules stable despite wild temperature swings on the moon, according to the study.
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