Author: starpathwp-production
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China Commercial Space Monthly — July 2026: China’s Commercial Space Sector Enters a Phase of Scaled Capability Building
Key Assessments This Month China’s commercial space sector is entering a phase of building capabilities at scale. Several commercial launch companies are advancing the development and testing of reusable rockets and rocket engines. The focus of industry competition will shift from “whether a company can succeed” to “whether it can operate reliably, efficiently, and at…
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Chinese Long March-8A rocket launches new internet satellite group
China sent a new batch of internet satellites into orbit Tuesday from a commercial spacecraft launch site in the southern island province of Hainan. A Long March-8A carrier rocket, carrying the 23rd group of the low-orbit internet constellation, blasts off from the Hainan commercial spacecraft launch site in Wenchang, south China’s Hainan Province, Aug. 4,…
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Rocket Lab Wins $397M Contract to Build and Launch Threat-Tracking ‘Flatellites’
Rocket Lab’s ($RKLB) strategy to own every aspect of the space value chain—from satellite manufacturing to launch—seems to be paying off. The Space Force awarded Rocket Lab a $397M contract yesterday to fund the development, launch, and operations of a constellation of “Flatellites”—Rocket Lab’s latest flat-packed satellite design—under the Space Force’s Space-Based Airborne Moving Target…
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Blue Origin Traces New Glenn Explosion to BE-4 Oxygen Valve
The disclosure came in an August 5 statement on social media from Blue Origin Chief Executive Dave Limp, the first major update on the failure investigation since the explosion. The company had previously focused its updates on the reconstruction of Launch Complex 36, the pad damaged in the incident. Limp said the anomaly originated at…
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Rocket Lab Lands $397 Million Space Force Deal to Build and Fly SB-AMTI “Flatellites”
SB-AMTI is designed to track airborne targets from orbit. The program forms part of a broader Space Force push to give the U.S. military persistent overhead tracking of aircraft and missiles from low Earth orbit, a capability that would have been unthinkable on small satellites a decade ago. Rocket Lab was one of three vendors…
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Neuraspace Raises 15.6 Million Euros to Build European Space Domain Awareness Platform
The funding combines a six million euro Series B round from venture capitalists with 9.6 million euros from Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan, an EU-backed national program created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The public portion is earmarked for the NeuraspaceDEF platform, while the broader proceeds will complement the company’s existing optical telescopes with…
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SpaceX Delivers Three More BlueBird Satellites to Orbit for AST SpaceMobile
The launch came about a month and a half after SpaceX flew the BlueBird 8-10 mission. It was the third time SpaceX has carried satellites for AST SpaceMobile’s constellation, which aims to connect standard phones without any special hardware. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station occurred at 3:49 a.m.…
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Perseverance Captures Earth Vanishing Behind Phobos in a First for Human History
This annotated composite of nine images taken by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z on July 2, 2026, shows Earth — the small bright dot moving from upper left to lower right — passing behind the Martian moon Phobos. The images in the inset were captured from the same rectangular patch of sky outlined in black. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI …
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Tesla Cybertrucks Certified as Crew Escape Vehicles for SpaceX Crew-13 Launch
The decision marks a visible connection between Elon Musk’s companies, with a consumer vehicle now certified for a role previously handled by specialized contractors. It also reflects how SpaceX’s vertical integration has extended into ground support equipment, a domain long served by outside suppliers. NASA and SpaceX both signed off on the safety determination that…
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SpaceX Commits Exclusively to Nvidia for Orbital AI Hardware
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that surfaced the project before SpaceX made it official. The concept moves computation off the ground entirely. Rather than shipping data to terrestrial servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would run AI workloads in…