🛰️ MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS

🇺🇸 Initial Project Kuiper broadband services have slipped into 2025, Amazon said June 27 amid plans to launch its first batch of production satellites on an Atlas V rocket in the last three months of this year.
Amazon had earlier aimed to start deploying more than 3,200 satellites in the first half of 2024 to begin beta trials with potential customers, including Verizon in the United States.
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🇺🇸 🇸🇪 Firefly Aerospace has entered an agreement to launch its Alpha rocket from the Esrange Space Centre in northern Sweden.
The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) and U.S. space transportation company Firefly Aerospace announced a collaborative agreement June 27 for launches of Firefly’s Alpha rocket from Esrange spaceport starting in 2026.
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🇮🇹 🇪🇸 #Spain-based satellite operator Sateliot announced it has successfully integrated its satellite communication stack with Italy's Leaf Space's Ground Segment as a Service (GSaaS) Network. This announcement comes ahead of the SpaceX Transporter-11 mission, during which Sateliot will launch four new 6U satellites as part of its global 5G IoT connectivity plans.
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💰️ FINANCE, FUNDING AND M&A

🇺🇸 Earth observation company Planet announced June 26 it is laying off about 180 employees, or 17% of its workforce, in an effort to reduce costs.
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🛰️ CORE SERVICES

🇺🇸 🇩🇪 Viasat today announced that it is expanding its work with Airbus Defence and Space to provide its secure, flexible broadband Ku- and Ka-band airborne technology for the Airbus C295 Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) that have been acquired by the Spanish Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Viasat and Airbus Defence and Space will collaborate on the integration of Viasat’s dual-band (Ku/Ka) broadband terminal, the GAT-5530, into the Spanish C295 MPA fleet to provide a highly flexible, multi-band and multi-orbit, broadband SATCOM capability to support missions utilizing the sovereign, next-generation SpainSat NG satellites.
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🇺🇸 NASA selected SpaceX to develop a spacecraft that will be used to perform the final phases of the deorbiting of the International Space Station around the end of the decade.
NASA announced June 26 it awarded SpaceX a contract valued at up to $843 million to build the United States Deorbit Vehicle (USDV). That contract covers the development of the spacecraft, with NASA to conduct a later procurement for launching the USDV.
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🇨🇦 MDA Space has received a contract from the Canadian Space Agency worth $1 billion Canadian ($730 million) for the next phase of development of a robotic arm system for the lunar Gateway.
MDA Space announced June 27 it received the contract to continue work on the Canadarm3 system. The contract covers Phase C, final design of the system, and Phase D, assembly and test of it. The work is scheduled to run through March 2030.
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🛰️ PRODUCT, PARTNERSHIPS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

🇰🇷 🇺🇸 Terran Orbital and South Korea’s Hanwha Systems announced an MoU on Wednesday to work together on satellite manufacturing, including solar cells, and cooperate in the defense industry in both the U.S. and South Korea.
The announcement was light on details, but the companies said the MoU establishes a framework for joint research and development efforts for solar technology for satellites with Hanwha Systems subsidiary Flexell Space
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🚀 LAUNCH CONTRACTS AND MISSIONS

🇺🇸 SpaceX launches Starlink 10-3 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida
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🌎️ SPACE INDUSTRY ←→ DOWNSTREAM

🇬🇧 TTP is working with Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) to launch a new data relay terminal into space. The terminal can provide a constant link between Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) small satellites and Earth through a Geosynchronous satellite relay. The terminal will be launched shortly in the U.S. on Tyche, an Earth observation (EO) satellite for UK Space Command built by SSTL, and will be used for defense applications. TTP announced the upcoming launch on June 26.
The terminal is designed to offer a data rate of up to 200 kbps. In receive mode (Rx) it has a power consumption of 8W, with a peak consumption of 38W.
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📜 REGULATORY & GOVERNMENT

🇨🇳 A new report from the RAND Corporation suggests that China’s approach to space competition with the United States could increase the risk of unintended military escalation.
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🇺🇸 🇷🇺 U.S. Space Command confirmed that a defunct Russian satellite broke up in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) on Wednesday, creating more than 100 pieces of debris. 
Space Command said the breakup took place on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. MT. It was not clear why the satellite broke up, such as if it was the result of an anti-satellite test. 
The satellite, Resurs-P1 was a Russian Earth observation satellite launched in 2013, decommissioned in 2022. 
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🇺🇸 Thales Alenia Space has signed a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to support its zero-debris objectives for 2030 through immediate evolutions to Europe’s spacecraft buses, starting with Thales Alenia Space’s MILA multi-mission platform.
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