I. Tracking
1. Ariane 6 succeeds as Starship, its future competitor, struggles with another unexpected failure
In the very crowded world of launch vehicles, systems that enable access to space saw two impressive displays this week: Europe’s Ariane 6 reached orbit for the second time carrying a French spy satellite, while SpaceX’s Starship successfully lifted-off but the Starship portion again was destroyed soon after.
For SpaceX, the loss of Starship for the second time in a row is a concerning sign, given its record for learning and correcting previous mistakes rapidly and each flight. That the failure of the Starship occurred around the same phase flight as the previous mission is simply due to the large costs borne to test these systems. Fortunately, the booster section of the rocket was able to return to its launch pad successfully, further cementing the notion of ‘catching’ boosters may soon become commonplace. But while SpaceX was able to brush off the previous failure, especially with the Blue Origin ‘success’ that also stole some of the spotlight, the most recent disintegration takes place at the same time as successful competitor launch that will most likely steal some of its customer: Arianespace.
As is already known, Starship isn’t the only thing to disintegrate this week: the Trump White House has made enormous strides in shattering any trust between the US and its European partners. Ariane 6’s recent launch came as a huge relief to Europeans. While the rocket is still not as advanced as Starship, it offers credible capabilities for Europe to reach space without depending on the US, and is a key competitor to most other US launch services that do not offer reusability (in essence, anyone other than SpaceX). While Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are working on reusability, so is Arianespace through its Maiaspace venture, as well as other European rocket makers. As Donald Trump continues to publicly humiliate non-Americans and flicks tariffs on and off unpredictably, Europe seems to be more and more willing to spend on domestic space capabilities even if it adds additional costs and creates redundancy in the industry. To most of Europe, this enables stability.
This is a warning sign for SpaceX and other US launch providers. While the European rocket can’t claim the same launch rate as SpaceX, and it certainly had a very long development timeline, Europe’s willingness to further fund its capabilities is only increasing, in direct relation to Europe’s reluctance to use American rockets. Whatever demand SpaceX, Blue Origin and ULA were planning to satisfy to fund their operations and their multi-decade development timelines (especially for Blue and ULA), European customers are more and more likely to disappear. Commercially, this also may mean that Ariane 6 may siphon off other foreign capabilities (Mexico and Canada may want to launch with other providers than the US).
Starship will deliver capabilities that Europe doesn’t currently have, but every failure provides crucial time for Europe and other players to catch up – after that, it becomes a commercial and geopolitical competition that SpaceX may struggle with, especially with its CEO very public presence. Thankfully for SpaceX, rockets are not its money-making business. But even Starlink is seeing storm clouds on the horizon.
2. The commercial space industry is seeing its first taste of instability brought by Trumpism as SSA leadership affected
The Office of Space Commerce’s (OSC) effort to develop a civil space traffic coordination system, TraCSS, faces uncertainty despite recent progress. Dmitry Poisik, the program manager for TraCSS, was briefly laid off as part of broader federal employee cuts but was reinstated after industry concerns were raised. However, worries persist about the program’s long-term future due to potential budget cuts and layoffs.
Industry experts fear that delays or setbacks could slow progress and weaken international coordination on space traffic management. The US has long enjoyed leadership in the domain, especially with some fairly transparent efforts to catalogue objects in space and provide public conjunction assessments. That leadership is rapidly disappearing, creating a vacuum.
Dozens of startups are aiming to provide additional data, however, without US leadership, the standards of information processing and sharing are quickly making all these efforts extremely expensive. The US government still provides a free solution, it just is frozen in its current state. The EU is working toward an alternative, but is also facing significant hurdles for timeliness and data collection. Startups may move rapidly to provide data, however, financing that rapid deployment remains primarily conditional on government approval (especially if your technology is likely to detect classified systems).
What is becoming clearer is that an incident will most likely need to occur before anything of substance is done to coordinate at an international level, especially without US involvement. While Europe EUSST program may win over other countries to participate, the US remains the country with the most satellites in orbit, and the major player in all this, SpaceX’s Starlink, is unlikely to want to cooperate. After all, the recent firings at TraCSS are directed by Elon Musk.
II. Immediate Awareness
1 ICEYE and Saab have signed an MoU to explore integrating ICEYE’s SAR data into command and control systems, providing additional defense credibility and potential customers for the European startup.
2 Star Catcher Industries has secured $2 million in funding from Space Florida to demonstrate its satellite power-beaming technology, which aims to provide energy to spacecraft in low Earth orbit, using tests at the former Space Shuttle landing site.
3 Danti expands its potential customer base to government agencies, demonstrating the critical need for software solutions to sift through enormous amounts of data originating from space assets.
4 Leonardo SpA, the Italian defense and aerospace company, has replaced Bank of America with Deutsche Bank, favoring European stability over risks incurred by the Trump administration to increase conditions for cooperation.
5 The Franco-Japanese-German program called Callisto, aiming to develop a reusable rocket, has announced hardware testing for its demonstrator, further accelerating competition in the reusability launch space.
6 The ESA has announced that Sentinel-2A will be given a one-year operational extension to continue to meet Copernicus’ customer base demands to receive high-quality Earth observation data, indicating that commercial solutions may not be sufficient or adequate.
7 Japanese startup ElevationSpace has become Isar Aerospace's first Asian customer, booking a 2026 launch for its AOBA spacecraft, and completing Isar’s launch manifest until mid-2027.
III. Quote of the Week
"This is a classic short squeeze of relatively unheard-of proportions, but to be fair, proportionate to the tectonic shifts we see in global geopolitics since the election of Trump."
Bernstein analyst Aleksander Peterc said, regarding the Eutelsat stock price climbing by 650+ % in a week.