MilitaryRockets

Astra Targets Golden Dome With Small Rockets, Says CEO Chris Kemp

“We’re going to do target practice. We’re going to make the clay-pigeon rocket,” Kemp said. “That’s great, because that will drive scale for us…and allow us to bring our cost down for commercial customers, and other government customers.”

Military

Trump Taps Space Execs For Military Space Roles

Both nominees will need to be confirmed by the Senate before they can get on the job. 

EuropeVC/PE

UNIVITY Raises €27M Series A

Blast Club and Expansion Venture Capital contributed to the round, which also included support from the Deep Tech fund managed by Bpifrance. 

CivilPolicy

Lawmakers Promise to Reject Proposed NASA Cuts—Again

“I simply do not believe that this budget proposal is capable of supporting what President [Donald] Trump himself has directed the agency to accomplish,” Babin said. 

VC/PE

ATMOS Space Cargo Raises €25.7M Series A

“This financing allows us to move to regular operational service,” CEO and cofounder Sebastian Klaus said in a statement. “With ATMOS WORKS and PHOENIX 3, we are building the full architecture—commercial, institutional, and defense-capable—in parallel.” 

ExplainerPolaris

Payload Field Guide: Golden Dome

When Golden Dome was first announced (under a different moniker) in January 2025, companies immediately got to work, positioning themselves to compete for the ambitious missile defense program aiming to protect the US. 

BusinessDeep Space

Opportunities Beyond the Moon Opened by CLPS

NASA said it intends to launch monthly uncrewed missions to the Moon starting next year. That’s good news for more than just Moon-focused companies. 

International

Latvia To Join Artemis Accords Today

“While I’m thrilled with 61 countries, a third of the world having signed, that’s wonderful. But we need to transition those signatures from supporting norms of behavior, which is important, to making contributions to the Artemis program,” Mike Gold, Redwire’s president of civil and international space, said Wednesday during a panel at Space Symposium. 

Business

Rocket Lab Enters the Thruster Market with Gauss

“Early technology development can be done at these small mom and pop shops, but when it really comes prime time to make things at scale, people like ourselves who are procurers of that, if they don’t vertically integrate, they get very nervous,” Rocket Lab CFO Adam Spice told Payload

CivilISSLunar

Axiom Space’s Suit Set to Fly in 2027

“From a production standpoint, we’re putting together the first qualification suit,” Michael López-Alegría, the company’s chief astronaut, told Payload. “That continues regardless of what they say.”

BusinessCivil

Voyager Technologies Wins Its First Private ISS Mission

Axiom Space was the only provider for the first five PAMs awarded by NASA, but new players have entered the competition in 2026. 

CivilQ&A

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman On Artemis, Budget, And Establishing a Lasting Space Vision

“There’s a lot of passionate people out here. They can do incredible things from a scientific perspective,” Isaacman told Payload. “I don’t know how many of them have ever pulled together a financial model, and driven execution on some of these things, to say what should or shouldn’t be the right budget.”

CivilPolaris

CLD Companies Say NASA Is Wrong. NASA Says Prove It. 

“I’m not surprised that CLD providers didn’t like what we had to say,” Isaacman told Payload on the sidelines of the Space Symposium. “So, prove we got it wrong.”