US Space Force base on California's coast used for military and commercial satellite launches and missile testing.
NASA's SSPICY mission, launched Oct. 1 on a Starfish Space Otter, will autonomously inspect up to four defunct US objects from early 2027. NASA says it is the first flight to test the craft's electric propulsion, thruster boom and navigation software together as one system.
Reality
Rheinmetall and Argotec put their first jointly built satellite into orbit on October 1 to test space-based early warning for air defense. With a second satellite on the roadmap for 2028, what buyers can evaluate now is how the feed would plug into air-defense networks they already run.
Reality
NASA's ASCENT CubeSat has cleared ground tests and launches no earlier than October 1 to run chemical and electrospray thrusters off one propellant tank. The tests covered seals, heat and balance, so the case for one propellant serving both engines rests on the flight.
Reality
Google's MVP satellite takes four TPUs and about 1 kW of solar power into orbit to test whether AI chips survive radiation and shed their own heat. Its results will show whether rebooting away bit flips and cooling through a radiator can carry into the constellations Google has already sketched.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishersReality
The August 20 National Space Transportation Policy sets a 2030 floor of more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year against 181 launches in 2025, and the people who track range capacity put the shortage in payload buildings and site plumbing.
Reality